The Corner House Girls at School
by Grace Brooks Hill · English · Gutenberg #21034 · 316,712 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Corner House Girls at School
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Corner House Girls at School
Author: Grace Brooks Hill
Illustrator: Robert Emmett Owen
Release date: April 11, 2007 [eBook #21034]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21034
Credits: Produced by Hilary Caws-Elwitt and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL ***
Produced by Hilary Caws-Elwitt and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL
BY GRACE BROOKS HILL
Author of "The Corner House Girls," "The Corner House Girls Under
Canvas," etc.
_ILLUSTRATED BY R. EMMETT OWEN_
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright, 1915
By BARSE & CO.
_Printed in the United States of America_
[Illustration: Agnes stooped lower and shot up the course, passing Trix
not three yards from the line.]
CONTENTS
I A Goat, Four Girls, and a Pig
II The White-headed Boy
III The Pig is Important
IV Neale O'Neil Gets Established
V Crackers--and a Toothache
VI Agnes Loses Her Temper and Dot Her Tooth
VII Neale in Disguise
VIII Introductions
IX Popocatepetl in Mischief
X The Ice Storm
XI The Skating Race
XII The Christmas Party
XIII The Barn Dance
XIV Uncle Rufus' Story of the Christmas Goose
XV Sadie Goronofsky's Bank
XVI A Quartette of "Lady Bountifuls"
XVII "That Circus Boy!"
XVIII Snowbound
XIX The Enchanted Castle
XX Trix Severn in Peril
XXI A Backyard Circus
XXII Mr. Sorber
XXIII Taming a Lion Tamer
XXIV Mr. Murphy Takes a Hand
XXV A Bright Future
THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL
CHAPTER I
A GOAT, FOUR GIRLS, AND A PIG
When Sam Pinkney brought Billy Bumps over to the old Corner House, and
tied him by the corner of the woodshed, there was at once a family
conclave called. Sam was never known to be into anything but mischief;
therefore when he gravely presented the wise looking old goat to Tess,
suspicion was instantly aroused in the Kenway household that there was
something beside good will behind Master Sam's gift.
"Beware of the Greeks when they come bearing gifts," Agnes freely
translated.
"But you know very well, Aggie, Sammy Pinkney is not a Greek. He's
Yankee--like us. That's a Greek man that sells flowers down on Main
Street," said Tess, with gravity.
"What I said is allegorical," pronounced Agnes, loftily.
"We know Allie Neuman--Tess and me," ventured Dot, the youngest of the
Corner House girls. "She lives on Willow Street beyond Mrs. Adams'
house, and she is going to be in my grade at school."
"Oh, fine, Ruth!" cried Agnes, the twelve-year-old, suddenly seizing the
eldest sister and dancing her about the big dining-room. "Won't it be
just _fine_ to get to school again?"
"Fine for me," admitted Ruth, who had missed nearly two years of school
attendance, and was now going to begin again in her proper grade at the
Milton High School.
"Eva Larry says we'll have the very nicest teacher there is--Miss
Shipman. This is Eva's last year in grammar school, too, you know. We'll
graduate together," said Agnes.
Interested as Tess and Dot were in the prospect of attending school in
Milton for the first time, just now they had run in to announce the
arrival of Mr. Billy Bumps.
"And a very suggestive name, I must say," said Ruth, reflectively. "I
don't know about that Pinkney boy. Do you suppose he is playing a joke
on you, Tess?"
"Why, no!" cried the smaller girl. "How could he? _For the goat's
there._"
"Maybe that's the joke," suggested Agnes.
"Well, we'll go and see him," said Ruth. "But there must be some reason
beside good-will that prompted that boy to give you such a present."
"I know," Dot said, solemnly.
"What is it, Chicken-little?" demanded the oldest sister, pinching the
little girl's cheek.
"Their new minister," proclaimed Dot.
"Their _what_?" gasped Agnes.
"Who, dear?" asked Ruth.
"Mrs. Pinkney's new minister. She goes to the Kaplan Chapel," said Dot,
gravely, "and they got a new minister there. He came to call at Mrs.
Pinkney's and the goat wasn't acquainted with him."
"Oh-ho!" giggled Agnes. "Light on a dark subject."
"Who told you, child?" asked Tess, rather doubtfully.
"Holly Pease. And she said that Billy Bumps butted the new minister
right through the cellar window--the coal window."
"My goodness!" ejaculated Ruth. "Did it hurt him?"
"They'd just put in their winter's coal, and he went head first into
that," said Dot. "So he didn't fall far. But he didn't dare go out of
the house again until Sam came home after school and shut Billy up.
Holly says Billy Bumps camped right outside the front door and kept the
minister a prisoner."
The older girls were convulsed with laughter at this tale, but Ruth
repeated: "We might as well go and see him. If he is _very_ savage----"
"Oh, he isn't!" cried Tess and Dot together. "He's just as tame!"
The four sisters started for the yard, but in the big kitchen Mrs.
MacCall stopped them. Mrs. MacCall was housekeeper and she mothered the
orphaned Kenway girls and seemed much nearer to them than Aunt Sarah
Maltby, who sat most of her time in the big front room upstairs, seldom
speaking to her nieces.
Mrs. MacCall was buxom, gray-haired--and every hair was martialed just
_so_, and all imprisoned in a cap when the good lady was cooking. She
was looking out of one of the rear windows when the girls trooped
through.
"For the land sakes!" ejaculated Mrs. MacCall. "What's that goat doing
in our yard?"
"It's our goat," explained Tess.
_"What?"_
"Yes, ma'am," said Dot, seriously. "He's a very nice goat. He has a real
noble beard--don't you think?"
"A goat!" repeated Mrs. MacCall. "What next? A goat is the very last
thing I could ever find a use for in this world. But I s'pose the
Creator knew what He was about when He made them."
"I think they're lots of fun," said roly-poly Agnes, giggling again.
"Fun! Ah! what's that he's eatin' this very minute?" screamed Mrs.
MacCall, and she started for the door.
She led the way to the porch, and immediately plunged down the steps
into the yard. "My stocking!" she shrieked. "The very best pair I own.
Oh, dear! Didn't I say a goat was a perfectly useless thing?"
It was a fact that a limp bit of black rag hung out of the side of Billy
Bumps' mouth. A row of stockings hung on a line stretched from the
corner of the woodshed and the goat had managed to reach the first in
the row.
"Give it up, you beast!" exclaimed Mrs. MacCall, and grabbed the toe of
the stocking just as it was about to disappear.
She yanked and Billy disgorged the hose. He had chewed it to pulp,
evidently liking the taste of the dye. Mrs. MacCall threw the thing from
her savagely and Billy lowered his head, stamped his feet, and
threatened her with his horns.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Mrs. MacCall!" cried Ruth, soothingly.
"That won't bring back my stocking," declared the housekeeper. "Half a
pair of stockings--humph! that's no good to anybody, unless it's a
person with a wooden leg."
"I'll get you a new pair, Mrs. MacCall," said Tess. "Of course, I'm sort
of responsible for Billy, for he was given to me."
"You'll be bankrupt, I'm afraid, Tess," chuckled Agnes, "if you try to
make good for all the damage a goat can do."
"But it won't cost much to keep him," said Tess, eagerly. "You know,
they live on tin cans, and scraps, and thistles, and all sorts of
_cheap_ things."
"Those stockings weren't cheap," declared the housekeeper as she took
her departure. "They cost seventy-five cents."
"Half your month's allowance, Tess," Dot reminded her, with awe. "Oh,
dear, me! Maybe Billy Bumps will be expensive, after all."
"Say! Ruth hasn't said you can keep him yet," said Agnes. "He looks
dangerous to me. He has a bad eye."
"Why! he's just as kind!" cried Tess, and immediately walked up to the
old goat. At once Billy stopped shaking his head, looked up, and bleated
softly. He was evidently assured of the quality of Tess Kenway's
kindness.
"He likes me," declared Tess, with conviction.
"Glo-ree!" ejaculated a deep and unctuous voice, on the heels of Tess'
declaration. "Wha's all dis erbout--heh! Glo-ree! Who done let dat goat
intuh disher yard? Ain' dat Sam Pinkney's ol' Billy?"
A white-haired, broadly smiling old negro, stooped and a bit lame with
rheumatism, but otherwise spry, came from the rear premises of the old
Corner House, and stopped to roll his eyes, first glancing at the
children and then at the goat.
"Whuffor all disher combobberation? Missee Ruth! Sho' ain' gwine tuh
take dat ole goat tuh boa'd, is yo'?"
"I don't know what to do, Uncle Rufus," declared Ruth Kenway, laughing,
yet somewhat disturbed in her mind. She was a dark, straight-haired
girl, with fine eyes and a very intelligent face. She was not pretty
like Agnes; yet she was a very attractive girl.
"Oh! we want to keep him!" wailed Dot. She, too, boldly approached Billy
Bumps. It seemed as though the goat knew both the smaller Kenway girls,
for he did not offer to draw away from them.
"I 'spect Mr. Pinkney made dat Sam git rid ob de ole goat," grumbled
Uncle Rufus, who was a very trustworthy servant and had lived for years
at the old Corner House before the four Kenway sisters came to dwell
there. "I reckon he's a bad goat," added the old man.
"He doesn't look very wicked just now," suggested Agnes.
"But where can we keep a goat?" demanded Ruth.
"Dot used to think one lived in the garret," said Tess, smiling. "But it
was only a ghost folks thought lived there--and we know there aren't any
such things as ghosts _now_."
"Don' yo' go tuh 'spressin' ob you' 'pinion too frequent erbout sperits,
chile," warned Uncle Rufus, rolling his eyes again. "Dere may hab been
no ghos' in de garret; but dere's ghos'es somewhars--ya-as'm. Sho' is!"
"I don't really see how we can keep him," said Ruth again.
"Oh, sister!" cried Tess.
"Poor, dear Billy Bumps!" exclaimed Dot, with an arm around the short,
thick neck of the goat.
"If yo' lets me 'spressify maself," said Uncle Rufus, slowly, "I'd say
dat mebbe I could put him in one oh de hen runs. We don't need 'em both
jest now."
"Goody!" cried Tess and Dot, clapping their hands. "Let's, Ruthie!"
The older sister's doubts were overborne. She agreed to the proposal,
while Agnes said:
"We might as well have a goat. We have a pig 'most every day. That pig
of Mr. Con Murphy's is always coming under the fence and tearing up the
garden. A goat could do no more harm."
"But we don't want the place a menagerie," objected Ruth.
Dot said, gravely, "Maybe the goat and the pig will play together, and
so the pig won't do so much damage."
"The next time that pig comes in here, I'm going right around to Mr. Con
Murphy and complain," declared Agnes, with emphasis.
"Oh! we don't want to have trouble with any neighbor," objected Ruth,
quickly.
"My! you'd let folks ride right over you," said Agnes, with scorn for
Ruth's timidity.
"I don't think that poor cobbler, Mr. Murphy, will ride over me--unless
he rides on his pig," laughed Ruth, as she followed Mrs. MacCall
indoors.
Tess had an idea and she was frank to express it. "Uncle Rufus, this
goat is very strong. Can't you fashion a harness and some kind of a cart
for him so that we can take turns riding--Dot and me? He used to draw
Sam Pinkney."
"Glo-ree!" grumbled the colored man again. "I kin see where I got my
han's full wid disher goat--I do!"
"But you _can_, Uncle Rufus?" said Tess.
"Oh, yes, chile. I s'pect so. But fust off let me git him shut up in de
hen-yard, else he'll be eatin' up de hull ob Mis' MacCall's
wash--ya'as'm!"
The poultry pens were fenced with strong woven wire, and one of them was
not in use. Into this enclosure Mr. Billy Bumps was led. When the strap
was taken off, he made a dive for Uncle Rufus, but the darky was nimble,
despite his years.
"Yo' butt me, yo' horned scalawag!" gasped the old colored man, when
once safe on the outside of the pen, "an' I won't gib yo' nottin' ter
chew on but an old rubber boot fo' de nex' week--dat's what I'll do."
The old Corner House, as the Stower homestead was known to Milton folk,
stood facing Main Street, its side yard running back a long way on
Willow Street. It was a huge colonial mansion, with big pillars in
front, and two wings thrown out behind. For years before the Kenway
girls and Aunt Sarah Maltby had come here to live, the premises
outside--if not within--had been sadly neglected.
But energetic Ruth Kenway had insisted upon trimming the lawn and
hedges, planting a garden, repairing the summer-house, and otherwise
making neat the appearance of the dilapidated old place.
On the Main Street side of the estate the property of Mr. Creamer joined
the Corner House yard, but the Creamer property did not extend back as
far as that of the Stower place. In the corner at the rear the tiny yard
of Con Murphy touched the big place. Mr. Murphy was a cobbler, who held
title to a small house and garden on a back street.
This man owned a pig--a very friendly pig. Of that pig, more later!
Perhaps it was the fruit that attracted the pig into the Stower yard.
The Kenway girls had had plenty of cherries, peaches, apples, pears, and
small fruit all through the season. There were still some late peaches
ripening, and when Agnes Kenway happened to open her eyes early, the
very next morning after the goat came to live with them, she saw the
blushing beauty of these peaches through the open window of the ell room
she shared with Ruth.
Never had peaches looked so tempting! The tree was a tall seedling, and
the upper branches hung their burden near the open window.
All the lower limbs had been stripped by Uncle Rufus. But the old man
could not reach these at the top of the tree.
"It will be a mean shame for them to get ripe and fall off," thought
Agnes. "I believe I can reach them."
Up she hopped and slipped into her bathrobe. Just enough cool air
entered the room to urge her to pull on her hose and slip her feet into
slippers.
The window was at the back of the big house, away from the Willow Street
side, and well protected from observation (so Agnes thought) by the
shrubbery.
Below the window was a narrow ledge which ran around the house under the
second story windows. It took the reckless girl but a moment to get out
upon this ledge. To tell the truth she had tried this caper before--but
never at such an early hour.
Clinging to the window frame, she leaned outward, and grasped with her
other hand a laden, limb. The peaches were right before her; but she
could not pluck them.
"Oh! if I only had a third hand," cried Agnes, aloud.
Then, recklessly determined to reach the fruit, she let go of the window
frame and stretched her hand for the nearest blushing peach. To her
horror she found her body swinging out from the side of the house!
Her weight bore against the limb, and pushed it farther and farther away
from the house-wall; Agnes' peril was plain and imminent. Unable to
seize the window frame again and draw herself back, she was about to
fall between the peach tree and the side of the house!
CHAPTER II
THE WHITE-HEADED BOY
"The Corner House Girls," as they had come to be known to Milton folk,
and as they are known to the readers of the first volume of this series,
had occupied the great mansion opposite the lower end of the Parade
Ground, since the spring before.
They had come from Bloomingsburg, where their father and mother had
died, leaving them without guardianship. But when Uncle Peter Stower
died and left most of his property to his four nieces, Mr. Howbridge,
the lawyer, had come for the Kenway sisters and established them in the
old Corner House.
Here they had spent the summer getting acquainted with Milton folk
(making themselves liked by most of the neighbors), and gradually
getting used to their changed circumstances.
For in Bloomingsburg the Kenways had lived among very poor people, and
were very poor themselves. Now they were very fortunately conditioned,
having a beautiful home, plenty of money to spend (under the direction
of Mr. Howbridge) and the opportunity of making many friends.
With them, to the old mansion, had come Aunt Sarah Maltby. Really, she
was no relation at all to the Kenway girls, but she had lived with them
ever since they could remember.
In her youth Aunt Sarah had lived in the old Corner House, so this
seemed like home to her. Uncle Rufus had served the aforetime owner of
the place for many years, too; so _he_ was at home here. And as for Mrs.
MacCall, she had come to help Ruth and her sisters soon after their
establishment in the old Corner House, and by this time had grown to be
indispensable.
This was the household, saving Sandyface, the cat, and her four
kittens--Spotty, Almira, Popocatepetl and Bungle. And now there was the
goat, Mr. Billy Bumps.
Ruth was an intellectual looking girl--so people said. She had little
color, and her black hair was "stringy"--which she hated! Now that she
was no longer obliged to consider the expenditure of each dollar so
carefully, the worried look about her big brown eyes, and the
compression of her lips, had relaxed. For two years Ruth had been the
head of the household and it had made her old before her time.
She was only a girl yet, however; her sixteenth birthday was not long
behind her. She liked fun and was glad of the release from much of her
former care. And when she laughed, her eyes were brilliant and her mouth
surprisingly sweet.
The smaller girls--Tess (nobody ever called her Theresa) and
Dorothy--were both pretty and lively. Dot was Ruth in miniature, a
little, fairy-like brunette. Tess, who was ten, had a very kind heart
and was tactful. She had some of Ruth's dignity and more of Agnes' good
looks.
The twelve year old--the fly-away--the irrepressible--what shall we say
about her? That she laughed easily, cried stormily, was always playing
pranks, rather tomboyish, affectionate--utterly thoughtless----
Well, there is Agnes, out of the bedroom window in her bathrobe and
slippers just at dawn, with the birds chirping their first chorus, and
not a soul about (so she supposed) to either see or help her in her
sudden predicament.
She really was in danger; there was no doubt of it. A scream for help
would not bring Ruth in time; and it was doubtful if her older sister
could do anything to help her.
"Oh--_oh_--OH!" gasped Agnes, in crescendo. "I--am--go--ing--to--fall!"
And on the instant--the very sweetest sound Agnes Kenway had ever heard
(she admitted this fact afterward)--a boy's voice ejaculated:
"No you're not! Hang on for one minute!"
The side gate clicked. Feet scurried across the lawn, and under her as
she glanced downward, Agnes saw a slim, white-faced youth appear. He had
white hair, too; he was a regular tow-head. He was dressed in a shiny
black suit that was at least two full sizes too small for him. The
trousers hitched above his shoe-tops and the sleeves of his jacket were
so short that they displayed at least four inches of wrist.
Agnes took in these points on the instant--before she could say another
word. The boy was a stranger to her; she had never seen him before.
But he went to work just as though he had been introduced! He flung off
his cap and stripped off the jacket, too, in a twinkling. It seemed to
Agnes as though he climbed up the tree and reached the limb she clung to
as quickly as any cat.
He flung up his legs, wound them about the butt of the limb like two
black snakes, and seized Agnes' wrists. "Swing free--I've got you!" he
commanded.
Agnes actually obeyed. There was something impelling in his voice; but
likewise she felt that there was sufficient strength in those hands that
grasped her wrists, to hold her.
Her feet slipped from the ledge and she shot down. The white-haired boy
swung out, too, but they did not fall as Agnes agonizingly expected,
after she had trusted herself to the unknown.
There was some little shock, but not much; their bodies swung clear of
the tree--he with his head down, and she with her slippered feet almost
touching the wet grass.
"All right?" demanded the white-head. "Let go!"
He dropped her. She stood upright, and unhurt, but swayed a little,
weakly. The next instant he was down and stood, breathing quickly,
before her.
"Why--why--why!" gasped Agnes. Just like that! "Why, you did that just
like a circus."
Oddly enough the white-haired boy scowled and a dusky color came slowly
into his naturally pale cheek.
"What do you say that for?" he asked, dropping his gaze, and picking up
his cap and jacket. "What do you mean--circus?"
"Why," said Agnes, breathlessly, "just like one of those acrobats that
fly over the heads of the people, and do all those curious things in the
air----Why! you know."
"How do I know?" demanded the boy, quite fiercely.
It became impressed upon Agnes' mind that the stranger was angry. She
did not know why, and she only felt gratitude--and curiosity--toward
him.
"Didn't you ever go to a circus?" she asked, slowly.
The boy hesitated. Then he said, bluntly: "No!" and Agnes knew it was
the truth, for he looked now unwaveringly into her eyes.
"My! you've missed a lot," she breathed. "So did we till this summer.
Then Mr. Howbridge took us to one of those that came to Milton."
"What circus was it you went to?" the boy asked, quickly.
"Aaron Wall's Magnificent Double Show," repeated Agnes, carefully.
"There was another came--Twomley & Sorter's Herculean Circus and
Menagerie; but we didn't see that one."
The boy listened as though he considered the answer of some importance.
At the end he sighed. "No; I never went to a circus," he repeated.
"But you're just wonderful," Agnes declared. "I never saw a boy like
you."
"And I never saw a girl like you," returned the white-haired boy, and
his quick grin made him look suddenly friendly. "What did you crawl out
of that window for?"
"To get a peach."
"Did you get it?"
"No. It was just out of reach, after all. And then I leaned too far."
The boy was looking up quizzically at the high-hung fruit. "If you want
it awfully bad?" he suggested.
"There's more than one," said Agnes, giggling. "And you're welcome to
all you can pick."
"Do you mean it?" he shot in, at once casting cap and jacket on the
ground again.
"Yes. Help yourself. Only toss me down one."
"This isn't a joke, now?" the boy asked. "You've got a _right_ to tell
me to take 'em?"
"Oh, mercy! Yes!" ejaculated Agnes. "Do you think I'd tell a story?"
"I don't know," he said, bluntly.
"Well! I like _that_!" cried Agnes, with some vexation.
"I don't know you and you don't know me," said the boy. "Everybody that
I meet doesn't tell me the truth. So now!"
"Do _you_ always tell the truth?" demanded Agnes, shrewdly.
Again the boy flushed, but there was roguishness in his brown eyes. "I
don't _dare_ tell it--sometimes," he said.
"Well, there's nobody to scare _me_ into story-telling," said Agnes,
loftily, deciding that she did not like this boy so well, after all.
"Oh, I'll risk it--for the peaches," said the white-haired boy, coming
back to the--to him--principal subject of discussion, and immediately he
climbed up the tree.
Agnes gasped again. "My goodness!" she thought. "I know Sandyface
couldn't go up that tree any quicker--not even with Sam Pinkney's
bulldog after her."
He was a slim boy and the limbs scarcely bent under his weight--not even
when he was in the top of the tree. He seemed to know just how to
balance himself, while standing there, and fearlessly used both hands to
pick the remaining fruit.
Two of the biggest, handsomest peaches he dropped, one after the other,
into the lap of Agnes' thick bath-gown as she held it up before her. The
remainder of the fruit he bestowed about his own person, dropping it
through the neck of his shirt until the peaches quite swelled out its
fullness all about his waist. His trousers were held in place by a stout
strap, instead of by suspenders.
He came down from the tree as easily as he had climbed it--and with the
peaches intact.
"They must have a fine gymnasium at the school where you go," said
Agnes, admiringly.
"I never went to school," said the boy, and blushed again.
Agnes was very curious. She had already established herself on the porch
step, wrapped the robe closely around her, shook her two plaits back
over her shoulders, and now sunk her teeth into the first peach. With
her other hand she beckoned the white-haired boy to sit down beside her.
"Come and eat them," she said. "Breakfast won't be ready for ever and
ever so long yet."
The boy removed the peaches he had picked, and made a little pyramid of
them on the step. Then he put on his jacket and cap before he accepted
her invitation. Meanwhile Agnes was eating the peach and contemplating
him gravely.
She had to admit, now that she more closely inspected them, that the
white-haired boy's garments were extremely shabby. Jacket and trousers
were too small for him, as she had previously observed. His shirt was
faded, very clean, and the elbows were patched. His shoes were broken,
but polished brightly.
When he bit into the first peach his eye brightened and he ate the fruit
greedily. Agnes believed he must be very hungry, and for once the
next-to-the-oldest Kenway girl showed some tact.
"Will you stay to breakfast with us?" she asked. "Mrs. MacCall always
gets up at six o'clock. And Ruth will want to see you, too. Ruth's the
oldest of us Kenways."
"Is this a boarding-house?" asked the boy, seriously.
"Oh, no!"
"It's big enough."
"I 'spect it is," said Agnes. "There are lots of rooms we never use."
"Could--could a feller get to stay here?" queried the white-haired boy.
"Oh! I don't know," gasped Agnes. "You--you'd have to ask Ruth. And Mr.
Howbridge, perhaps."
"Who's he?" asked the boy, suspiciously.
"Our lawyer."
"Does he live here?"
"Oh, no. There isn't any man here but Uncle Rufus. He's a colored man
who lived with Uncle Peter who used to own this house. Uncle Peter gave
it to us Kenway girls when he died."
"Oh! then you own it?" asked the boy.
"Mr. Howbridge is the executor of the estate; but we four Kenway
girls--and Aunt Sarah--have the income from it. And we came to live in
this old Corner House almost as soon as Uncle Peter Stower died."
"Then you could take boarders if you wanted to?" demanded the
white-haired boy, sticking to his proposition like a leech.
"Why--maybe--I'd ask Ruth----"
"I'd pay my way," said the boy, sharply, and flushing again. She could
see that he was a very proud boy, in spite of his evident poverty.
"I've got some money saved. I'd earn more--after school. I'm going to
school across the Parade Ground there--when it opens. I've already seen
the superintendent of schools. He says I belong in the highest grammar
grade."
"Why!" cried Agnes, "that's the grade _I_ am going into."
"I'm older than you are," said the boy, with that quick, angry flush
mounting into his cheeks. "I'm fifteen. But I never had a chance to go
to school."
"That is too bad," said Agnes, sympathetically. She saw that he was
eager to enter school and sympathized with him on that point, for she
was eager herself.
"We'll have an awfully nice teacher," she told him. "Miss Shipman."
Just then Ruth appeared at the upper window and looked down upon them.
CHAPTER III
THE PIG IS IMPORTANT
"My goodness! what are you doing down there, Aggie?" demanded Ruth. "And
who's that with you!"
"I--I got up to get a peach, Ruthie," explained Agnes, rather
stammeringly. "And I asked the boy to have one, too."
Ruth, looking out of the bedroom window, expressed her amazement at this
statement by a long, blank stare at her sister and the white-haired boy.
Agnes felt that there was further explanation due from her.
"You see," she said, "he--he just saved my life--perhaps."
"How is that?" gasped Ruth. "Were you going to eat _all_ those peaches
by yourself! They might have killed you, that's a fact."
"No, no!" cried Agnes, while the boy's face flushed up darkly again. "He
saved me from falling out of the tree."
"Out of the tree? _This_ tree!" demanded Ruth. "How did you get into
it?"
"From--from the window."
"Goodness! you never! And with your bathrobe on!" ejaculated Ruth, her
eyes opening wider.
As an "explainer," Agnes was deficient. But she tried to start the story
all over again. "Hush!" commanded Ruth, suddenly. "Wait till I come
down. We'll have everybody in the house awake, and it is too early."
She disappeared and the boy looked doubtfully at Agnes. "Is she the
oldest sister you spoke of?"
"Yes. That's Ruth."
"She's kind of bossy, isn't she?"
"Oh! but we like to be bossed by Ruthie. She's just like mother was to
us," declared Agnes.
"I shouldn't think you'd like it," growled the white-haired boy. "I hate
to be bossed--and I won't be, either!"
"You have to mind in school," said Agnes, slowly.
"That's another thing," said the boy. "But I wouldn't let another boy
boss me."
In five minutes Ruth was down upon the back porch, too. She was neat and
fresh and smiling. When Ruth smiled, dimples came at the corners of her
mouth and the laughter jumped right out of her eyes at you in a most
unexpected way. The white-haired boy evidently approved of her, now that
he saw her close to.
"Tell me how it happened!" commanded Ruth of her sister, and Agnes did
so. In the telling the boy lost nothing of courage and dexterity, you
may be sure!
"Why, that's quite wonderful!" cried Ruth, smiling again at the boy. "It
was awfully rash of you, Aggie, but it was providential this--this--You
haven't told me his name?"
"Why! I don't know it myself," confessed Agnes.
"And after all he did for you!" exclaimed Ruth, in admonition.
"Aw--it wasn't anything," growled the boy, with all the sex's objection
to being thought a hero.
"You must be very strong--a regular athlete," declared Ruth.
"Any other boy could do it."
"No!"
"If he knew how," limited the white-haired boy.
"And how did you learn so much!" asked Ruth, curiously.
Again the red flushed into his pale face. "Practicin'. That's all," he
said, rather doggedly.
"Won't you tell us who you are?" asked Ruth, feeling that the boy was
keeping up a wall between them.
"Neale O'Neil."
"Do you live in Milton?"
"I do now."
"But I never remember seeing you before," Ruth said, puzzled.
"I only came to stay yesterday," confessed the boy, and once more he
grinned and his eyes were roguish.
"Oh! then your folks have just moved in?"
"I haven't any folks."
"No family at all?"
"No, ma'am," said Neale O'Neil, rather sullenly Ruth thought
"You are not all alone--a boy like you?"
"Why not?" demanded he, tartly. "I'm 'most as old as you are."
"But _I_ am not all alone," said Ruth, pleasantly. "I have the girls--my
sisters; and I have Aunt Sarah--and Mr. Howbridge."
"Well, I haven't anybody," confessed Neale O'Neil, rather gloomily.
"You surely have some friends?" asked Ruth, not only curious, but
sympathetic.
"Not here. I'm alone, I tell you." Yet he did not speak so ungratefully
now. It was impressed upon his mind that Ruth's questions were friendly.
"And I am going to school here. I've got some money saved up. I want to
find a boarding place where I can part pay my board, perhaps, by working
around. I can do lots of things."
"I see. Look after furnaces, and clean up yards, and all that?"
"Yes," said the boy, with heightened interest. "This other one--your
sister--says you have plenty of empty rooms in this big house. Would you
take a boarder?"
"Goodness me! I never thought of such a thing."
"You took in that Mrs. Treble and Double Trouble," whispered Agnes, who
rather favored the suit of the white-haired boy.
"They weren't boarders," Ruth breathed.
"No. But you could let him come just as well." To tell the truth, Agnes
had always thought that "a boy around the house would be awfully
handy"--and had often so expressed herself. Dot had agreed with her,
while Ruth and Tess held boys in general in much disfavor.
Neale O'Neil had stood aside, not listening, but well aware that the
sisters were discussing his suggestion. Finally he flung in: "I ain't
afraid to work. And I'm stronger than I look."
"You _must_ be strong, Neale," agreed Ruth, warmly, "if you did what
Aggie says you did. But we have Uncle Rufus, and he does most
everything, though he's old. I don't just know what to say to you."
At that moment the sound of a sash flung up at the other side of the ell
startled the three young folk. Mrs. MacCall's voice sounded sharply on
the morning air:
"That pig! in that garden again! Shoo! Shoo, you beast! I wish you'd eat
yourself to death and then maybe your master would keep you home!"
"Oh, oh, oh!" squealed Agnes. "Con Murphy's pig after our cabbages!"
"That pig again?" echoed Ruth, starting after the flying Agnes.
The latter forgot how lightly she was shod, and before she was half-way
across the lawn her feet and ankles were saturated with dew.
"You'll get sopping wet, Aggie!" cried Ruth, seeing the bed slippers
flopping, half off her sister's feet.
"Can't help it now," stammered Agnes. "Got to get that pig! Oh, Ruth!
the hateful thing!"
The cobbler's porker was a freebooter of wide experience. The old Corner
House yard was not the only forbidden premises he roved in. He always
dug a new hole under the fence at night, and appeared early in the
morning, roving at will among the late vegetables in Ruth's garden.
He gave a challenging grunt when he heard the girls, raised his head,
and his eyes seemed fairly to twinkle as he saw their wild attack. A
cabbage leaf hung crosswise in his jaws and he continued to champ upon
it reflectively as he watched the enemy.
"Shoo! Shoo!" shouted Agnes.
"That pig is possessed," moaned Ruth. "He's taken the very one I was
going to have Uncle Rufus cut for our Saturday's dinner."
Seeing that the charging column numbered but two girls, the pig tossed
his head, uttered a scornful grunt, and started slowly out of the
garden. He was in no hurry. He had grown fat on these raids, and he did
not propose to lose any of the avoirdupois thus gained, by hurrying.
Leisurely he advanced toward the boundary fence. There was the fresh
earth where he had rooted out of Mr. Con Murphy's yard into this larger
and freer range.
Suddenly, to his piggish amazement, another figure--a swiftly flying
figure--got between him and his way of escape. The pig stopped, snorted,
threw up his head--and instantly lost all his calmness of mind.
"Oh, that boy!" gasped Ruth.
Neale O'Neil was in the pig's path, and he bore a stout fence-picket.
For the first time in his experience in raiding these particular
premises, his pigship had met with a foe worthy of his attention. Four
girls, an old lady, and an ancient colored retainer, in giving chase
heretofore, merely lent spice to the pig's buccaneering ventures.
He dashed forward with a sudden grunt, but the slim boy did not dodge.
Instead he brought that picket down with emphasis upon the pig's snout.
"Wee! wee! wee!" shrieked the pig, and dashed headlong down the yard,
blind to anything but pain and immediate escape.
"Oh! don't hurt him!" begged Ruth.
But Agnes had caught her sister around the neck and was hanging upon
her, weak with laughter. "Did you hear him? Did you hear him?" she
gasped. "He's French, and all the time I thought he was Irish. Did you
hear how plain he said 'Yes,' with a pure Parisian accent?"
"Oh, Neale!" cried Ruth again. "Don't hurt him!"
"No; but I'll scare him so he won't want to come in here again in a
hurry," declared the boy.
"Let the boy alone, Ruth," gasped Agnes. "I have no sympathy for the
pig."
The latter must have felt that everybody was against him. He could look
nowhere in the enemy's camp for sympathy. He dove several times at the
fence, but every old avenue of escape had been closed. And that boy with
the picket was between him and the hole by which he had entered.
Finally he headed for the hen runs. There was a place in the fence of
the farther yard where Uncle Rufus had been used to putting a trough of
feed for the poultry. The empty trough was still there, but when the pig
collided with it, it shot into the middle of the apparently empty yard.
The pig followed it, scrouging under the fence, and squealing
intermittently.
"There!" exclaimed Neale O'Neil. "Why not keep him in that yard and make
his owner pay to get him home again?"
"Oh! I couldn't ask poor Mr. Murphy for money," said Ruth, giving an
anxious glance at the little cottage over the fence. She expected every
moment to hear the cobbler coming to the rescue of his pet.
And the pig did not propose to remain impounded. He dashed to the
boundary fence and found an aperture. Through it he caught a glimpse of
home and safety.
But the hole was not quite deep enough. Head and shoulders went through
all right; but there his pigship stuck.
There was a scurrying across the cobbler's yard, but the Kenway girls
and their new friend did not hear this. Instead, they were startled by a
sudden rattling of hoofs in a big drygoods box that stood inside the
poultry pen.
"What's that?" demanded Neale O'Neil.
"It's--it's Billy Bumps!" shrieked Agnes.
Out of the box dashed the goat. The opening fronted the boundary fence,
beneath which the pig was stuck. Perhaps Billy Bumps took the rapidly
curling and uncurling tail of the pig for a challenging banner. However
that might be, he lowered his head and catapulted himself across the
yard as true as a bullet for the target.
Slam! the goat landed just where it seemed to do the most good, for the
remainder of the pig shot through the aperture in the board fence on the
instant. One more affrighted squeal the pig uttered, and then:
"Begorra! 'Tis ivry last brith in me body ye've knocked out," came from
the other side of the fence.
"Oh, Agnes!" gasped Ruth, as the sisters clung together, weak from
laughter. "That pig can't be French after all; for that's as broad an
Irish brogue as ever I heard!"
CHAPTER IV
NEALE O'NEIL GETS ESTABLISHED
Perhaps Billy Bumps was as much amazed as anybody when he heard what
seemed to be the pig expressing his dissatisfaction in a broad Irish
brogue on the other side of the fence.
The old goat's expression was indeed comical. He backed away from the
hole through which he had just shot the raider head-first, shook his own
head, stamped, and seemed to listen intently to the hostile language.
"Be th' powers! 'Tis a dirthy, mane thrick, so ut is! An' th' poor pig
kem t'roo th' hole like it was shot out of a gun."
"It's Mr. Murphy!" whispered Ruth, almost as much overcome with laughter
as Agnes herself.
Neale O'Neil was frankly amazed; but in a moment he, like the girls,
jumped to the right conclusion. The cobbler had run to the rescue of his
pet. He had seized it by the ears as it was trying to crowd under the
fence, and tugged, too. When old Billy Bumps had released his pigship,
the latter had bowled the cobbler over.
Mr. Con Murphy possessed a vocabulary of most forceful and picturesque
words, well colored with the brogue he had brought on his tongue from
"the ould dart." Mr. Murphy's "Irish was up" and when he got his breath,
which the pig had well nigh knocked out of him, the little old cobbler
gave his unrestrained opinion of the power that had shot the pig under
the fence.
Ruth could not allow the occurrence to end without an explanation. She
ran to the fence and peered over.
"Oh, Mr. Murphy!" she cried. "You're not really hurt?"
"For the love av mercy!" ejaculated the cobbler. "Niver tell me that
_youse_ was the one that pushed the pig through the fince that har-rd
that he kem near flyin' down me t'roat? Ye niver could have done it,
Miss Kenway--don't be tillin' me. Is it wan o' thim big Jarmyn guns
youse have got in there, that the pa-apers do be tillin' erbout?"
He was a comical looking old fellow at best, and out here at this early
hour, with only his trousers slipped on over his calico nightshirt, and
heelless slippers on his feet, he cut a curious figure indeed.
Mr. Con Murphy was a red-faced man, with a fringe of sandy whiskers all
around his countenance like a frame, having his lips, chin and cheeks
smoothly shaven. He had no family, lived alone in the cottage, and
worked very hard at his cobbler's bench.
"Why, Mr. Murphy!" cried Ruth. "Of course _I_ didn't push your pig
through the fence."
"It was Billy Bumps," giggled Agnes.
"Who is that, thin?" demanded Mr. Murphy, glaring at Neale O'Neil. "That
young felley standin' there, I dunno?"
"No. I only cracked your pig over the nose with this fence paling," said
the boy. "I wonder you don't keep the pig at home."
"Oh, ye do, do ye?" cried the little Irishman. "Would ye have me lock
him into me spare bedroom?"
"I would if he were mine--before I'd let him be a nuisance to the
neighbors," declared Neale O'Neil.
"Oh, Neale!" interposed Ruth. "You mustn't speak so. Of course the pig
is annoying----"
"He's a nuisance. Anybody can see that," said the boy, frankly.
"'Tis a smart lad ye ar-re," sneered Mr. Murphy. "Show me how ter kape
the baste at home. The fince is not mine, whativer ye say. If it isn't
strong enough to kape me pig out----"
"I'll fix it for you in half a day--if you'll pay me for it,"
interrupted Neale O'Neil.
"How will ye do ut? and how much will ye tax me?" queried the cautious
cobbler.
"I'd string a strand of barbed wire all along the bottom of the fence.
That will stop the pig from rooting, I'll be bound."
The old Irishman rubbed his chin reflectively. "'Twill cost a pretty
penny," he said.
"Then," said Neale O'Neil, winking at the girls, "let's turn Billy Bumps
loose, and the next time the pig comes in I hope he'll butt his head
off!"
"Hi!" shouted Mr. Murphy. "Who's this Billy Bumps ye air talkin' so fast
about?"
"That's our goat," explained Agnes, giggling.
Mr. Murphy's roving eyes caught sight of the billy, just then
reflectively nibbling an old shoe that had been flung into the pen.
"Is that the baste that shot me pig under the fince?" he yelped.
Billy Bumps raised his head, shook his venerable beard, and blatted at
the cobbler.
"He admits the accusation," chuckled Agnes.
"Shure," said Mr. Murphy, wagging his head, "if that thunderin' ould
pi-_rat_ of a goat ever gits a _good_ whack at me pig, he'd dr-rive him
through a knothole! Kem over and see me by and by, la-a-ad," he added,
to Neale, his eyes twinkling, "and we'll bargain about that barbed wire
job."
"I'll be over to see you, sir," promised the white-haired boy.
For Ruth had nudged his elbow and whispered: "You must stay to breakfast
with us, Neale."
The boy did so; but he successfully kept up that wall between the girls'
curiosity and his own private history. He frankly admitted that he had
gone hungry of late to save the little sum he had hoarded for the
opening of the Milton schools.
"For I'll have to buy some books--the superintendent told me so. And I
won't have so much time then to earn money for my keep," he said. "But I
am going to school whether I eat regularly, or not. I never had a chance
before."
"To eat?" asked Agnes, slily.
"Not like this!" declared Neale, laughing, as he looked about the
abundant table.
But without asking him point-blank just what his life had been, and why
he had never been to school, Ruth did not see how she was to learn more
than the white-haired boy wished to tell them.
The girls all liked him. Of course, Aunt Sarah, who was very odd, when
she came to table did not speak to the boy, and she glared at him
whenever he helped himself to one of Mrs. MacCall's light biscuit. But
the housekeeper appreciated the compliment he gave her cooking.
"I guess I don't make such bad biscuit after all," she said. "Sometimes
you girls eat so little at breakfast that I've thought my days for hot
bread making were over."
Neale blushed and stopped eating almost at once. Although frank to admit
his poverty, he did not like to make a display of his appetite.
Ruth had been thinking seriously of the proposition, and after breakfast
she told Neale that he might remain at the old Corner House--and
welcome--until he found just the place he desired.
"But I must pay you," said the boy, earnestly.
"We don't really need to be paid, Neale," said Ruth, warmly. "There are
so many empty rooms here, you know--and there is always enough for one
more at our table."
"I couldn't stop if I didn't do something to pay you," Neale said,
bluntly. "I'm no beggar."
"I tell you!" Ruth cried, having a happy thought. "You can help us clean
house. We must get it all done before school begins, so as to help Mrs.
MacCall. Uncle Rufus can't beat rugs, and lift and carry, like a younger
person."
"I'll do anything," promised Neale O'Neil. "But first I'll fix that
Irishman's fence so his pig can't root into your yard any more."
He was over at the cobbler's most of the day, but he showed up for the
noon dinner. Ruth had made him promise to come when he was called.
Mrs. MacCall insisted upon heaping his plate with the hearty food.
"Don't tell _me_," she said. "A boy's always hollow clean down to his
heels--and you're pretty tall for your age. It'll take some time to fill
you up properly."
"If I just let myself go, I really _can_ eat," admitted Neale O'Neil.
"And this is so much better cooking than I have been used to."
There it was again! Ruth and Agnes wanted--oh! _so_ much--to ask him
where he had lived, and with whom, that he had never before had proper
food given him. But although Neale was jolly, and free to speak about
everything else, the moment anything was suggested that might lead to
his explaining his previous existence, he shied just like an unbroken
colt.
"Just as if he didn't _have_ any existence at all," complained Agnes,
"before he ran through our side gate this morning, yelling to me to
'hold on.'"
"Never mind. We will win his confidence in time," Ruth said, in her
old-fashioned way.
"Even if he had done something----"
"Hush!" commanded Ruth. "Suppose somebody should hear? The children for
instance."
"Well! of course we don't really know anything about him."
"And I am sure he has not done anything very bad. He may be ashamed of
his former life, but I am sure it is not because of his own fault. He is
just very proud and, I think, very ambitious."
Of the last there could be no doubt. Neale O'Neil was not content to
remain idle at all. As soon as he had finished at Mr. Murphy's, he
returned to the old Corner House and beat rugs until it was time for
supper.
There was little wonder that his appetite seemed to increase rather than
diminish--he worked so hard!
"I don't believe you ever _did_ have enough to eat," giggled Agnes.
"I don't know that I ever did," admitted Neale.
"Suppose you should wake up in the night?" she suggested. "If you were
real hungry it would be dreadful. I think you'd better take some
crackers and cheese upstairs with, you when you go to bed."
Neale took this all in good temper, but Mrs. MacCall exclaimed,
suddenly:
"There! I knew there was something I forgot from the store to-day. Tess,
do you and Dot want to run over to Mr. Stetson's after supper and bring
me some crackers?"
"Of course we will, Mrs. MacCall," replied Tess.
"And I'll take my Alice-doll. She needs an airing," declared Dot. "Her
health isn't all that we might wish since that Lillie Treble buried her
alive."
"Buried her alive?" cried Neale. "Playing savages?"
"No," said Tess, gravely. "And she buried dried apples with her, too. It
was an awful thing, and we don't talk about it--much," she added, in a
whisper, with a nod toward Dot's serious face.
Out of this trip to the grocery arose a misunderstanding that was very
funny in the end. Ruth had chosen the very room, at the back of the
house, in which the lady from Ipsilanti and her little daughter had
slept, for the use of Neale O'Neil. After supper she had gone up there
to make the bed afresh, and she was there when Tess and Dorothy returned
home from the store, filled to the lips, and bursting, with a wonderful
piece of news.
"Oh, dear me, Ruthie!" cried Dot, being the leader, although her legs
were not the longest. "Did you know we all have to be _'scalloped_
before we can go to school here in Milton?"
"Be _what_?" gasped the oldest Kenway girl, smoothing up the coverlet of
the bed and preparing to plump the pillows.
"No," panted Tess, putting her bundle on the stand by the head of the
bed. "'Tisn't 'scalloped, Tess. It's vac--vacilation, I believe. Anyway,
it's some operation, and we all have to have it."
"Goodness me!" exclaimed Ruth, laughing. "We've all been vaccinated,
kiddies--and it wasn't such a dreadful operation, after all. All we'll
have to do is to show our arms to the doctor and he'll see we were
vaccinated recently."
"Well!" said Dot. "I knew it had something to do with that 'scallop mark
on my arm," and she tried to roll up the sleeve of her frock to see the
small but perfect scar that was the result of her vaccination.
They all left the room, laughing. Two hours later the house quieted
down, for the family had retired to their several rooms.
To Neale O'Neil, the waif, the big house was a very wonderful place. The
fine old furniture, the silver plate of which Uncle Rufus took such
loving care, the happy, merry girls, benevolent Mrs. MacCall and her odd
sayings, even Aunt Sarah with her grim manner, seemed creatures and
things of another world. For the white-haired boy had lived, since he
could remember, an existence as far removed from this quiet home-life at
the old Corner House, as could be imagined!
He told Agnes laughingly that he would be afraid to leave his room
during the night, for fear of getting lost in the winding passages, and
up and down the unexpected flights of stairs at the back of the house.
He heard the girls go away laughing when they had showed him to his
room. There was a gas-jet burning and he turned it up the better to see
the big apartment.
"Hullo! what's this?" Neale demanded, as he spied a paper bag upon the
stand.
He crossed to the head of the bed, and put his hand on the package.
There was no mistaking the contents of the bag at first touch.
Crackers!
"That's the fat girl!" exclaimed Neale, and for a moment he was really a
little angry with Agnes.
It was true, he _had_ gorged himself on Mrs. MacCall's good things. She
had urged him so, and he had really been on "short commons" for several
days. Agnes had suggested his taking crackers and cheese to bed with
him--and here was a whole bag of crackers!
He sat down a moment and glowered at the package. For one thing, he was
tempted to put on his cap and jacket and leave the Corner House at once.
But that would be childish. And Ruth had been so kind to him. He was
sure the oldest Kenway girl would never perpetrate such a joke.
"Of course, Aggie didn't mean to be unkind," he thought, at last, his
good judgment coming to his rescue. "I--I'd like to pay her back. I--I
will!"
He jumped up and went to the door, carrying the bag of crackers with
him. He opened the door and listened. Somewhere, far away, was the sound
of muffled laughter.
"I bet that's that Aggie girl!" he muttered, "and she's laughing at me."
CHAPTER V
CRACKERS--AND A TOOTHACHE
The arc light at the corner of Main Street vied with a faint moon in
illuminating the passages and corridors of the old Corner House. Deep
shadows lay in certain corners and at turns in the halls and staircases;
but Neale O'Neil was not afraid of the dark.
The distant laughter spurred him to find the girls' room. He wanted to
get square with Agnes, whom he believed had put the bag of crackers
beside his bed.
But suddenly a door slammed, and then there was a great silence over the
house. From the outside Neale could easily have identified the girls'
room. He had seen Aggie climb out of one of the windows of the chamber
in question that very morning.
But in a couple of minutes he had to acknowledge that he was completely
turned about in this house. He did not know that he had been put to
sleep in another wing from that in which the girls' rooms were situated.
Only Uncle Rufus slept in this wing besides himself, and he in another
story higher.
The white-haired boy came finally to the corridor leading to the main
staircase. This was more brilliantly lighted by the electric lamp on the
street. He stepped lightly forward and saw a faint light from a transom
over one of the front room doors.
"That's where those girls sleep, I bet!" whispered Neale to himself.
The transom was open. There was a little rustling sound within. Then the
light went out.
Neale broke the string and opened the bag of crackers. They were of the
thick, hard variety known in New England as "Boston" crackers. He took
out one and weighed it in his hand. It made a very proper missile.
With a single jerk of his arm he scaled the cracker through the open
transom. There was a slight scuffle within, following the cracker's
fall.
He paused a moment and then threw a second and a third. Each time the
rustling was repeated, and Neale kept up the bombardment believing that,
although the girls did not speak, the shower of crackers was falling
upon the guilty.
One after the other he flung the crackers through the transom until they
were all discharged. Not a sound now from the bombarded quarters.
Chuckling, Neale stole away, sure that he would have a big laugh on
Agnes in the morning.
But before he got back into his wing of the house, he spied a candle
with a girl in a pink kimono behind it.
"Whatever do you want out here, Neale O'Neil? A drink?"
It was Ruth. Neale was full of tickle over his joke, and he had to
relate it.
"I've just been paying off that smart sister of yours in her own coin,"
he chuckled.
"Which smart sister?"
"Why, Agnes."
"But how?"
Neale told her how he had found the bag of crackers on the table beside
his bed. "Nobody but Aggie would be up to such a trick, I know,"
chuckled Neale. "So I just pitched 'em all through the transom at her."
"What transom?" gasped Ruth, in dismay. "Where did you throw them?"
"Why, right through _that_ one," and Neale pointed. "Isn't that the room
you and Aggie occupy?"
"My goodness' sakes alive!" cried Ruth, awe-struck. "What _have_ you
done, Neale O'Neil? _That's Aunt Sarah's room._"
Ruth rushed to the door, tried it, found it unbolted, and ran in. Her
candle but dimly revealed the apartment; but it gave light enough to
show that Aunt Sarah was not in evidence.
Almost in the middle of the room stood the big "four-poster," with
canopy and counterpane, the fringe of which reached almost to the rag
carpet that covered the floor. A cracker crunched under Ruth's
slipper-shod foot. Indeed, crackers were everywhere! No part of the
room--save beneath the bed itself--had escaped the bombardment.
"Mercy on us!" gasped Ruth, and ran to the bed. She lifted a corner of
the counterpane and peered under. A pair of bare heels were revealed and
beyond them--supposedly--was the remainder of Aunt Sarah!
"Aunt Sarah! Aunt Sarah! do come out," begged Ruth.
"The ceilin's fallin', Niece Ruth," croaked the old lady. "This rickety
old shebang is a-fallin' to pieces at last. I allus told your Uncle
Peter it would."
"No, no, Aunt Sarah, it's all right!" cried Ruth. Then she remembered
Neale and knew if she told the story bluntly, Aunt Sarah would never
forgive the boy.
"Do, _do_ come out," she begged, meanwhile scrambling about, herself, to
pick up the crackers. She collected most of them that were whole easily
enough. But some had broken and the pieces had scattered far and wide.
With some difficulty the old lady crept out from under the far side of
the bed. She was ready to retire, her nightcap securely tied under her
chin, and all.
When Ruth, much troubled by a desire to laugh, asked her, she explained
that the first missile had landed upon her head while she was kneeling
beside the bed at her devotions.
"I got up and another of the things hit me on the ear," pursued Aunt
Sarah, short and sharp. "Another landed in the small of my back, and I
went over into that corner. But pieces of the ceiling were droppin' all
over and no matter where I got to, they hit me. So I dove under the
bed----"
"Oh! you poor, dear Auntie!"
"If the dratted ceilin's all comin' down, this ain't no place for us to
stay," quoth Aunt Sarah.
"I am sure it is all over," urged Ruth. "But if you'd like to go to
another room----?"
"And sleep in a bed that ain't been aired in a dog's age?" snapped Aunt
Sarah. "I guess not."
"Then, will you come and sleep with me? Aggie can go into the children's
room."
"No. If you are sure there ain't no more goin' to fall?"
"I am positive, Auntie."
"Then I'm going to bed," declared the old lady. "But I allus told Peter
this old place was bound to go to rack and ruin because o' his
miserliness."
Ruth waited till her aunt got into bed, where she almost at once fell
asleep. Then the girl scrambled for the remainder of the broken crackers
and carried them all out into the hall in the trash basket.
Neale O'Neil was sitting on the top step of the front stairs, waiting
for her appearance.
"Well! I guess I did it that time," he said. "She looked at me savage
enough to bite, at supper. What's she going to do now--have me arrested
and hung?" and he grinned suddenly.
"Oh, Neale!" gasped Ruth, overcome with laughter. "How could you?"
"I thought you girls were in there. I was giving Aggie her crackers
back," Neale grunted.
Ruth explained to him how the crackers had come to be left in his room.
Agnes had had nothing to do with it. "I guess the joke is on you, after
all, Neale," she said, obliged to laugh in the end.
"Or on that terrible old lady."
"But she doesn't know it is a joke. I don't know what she'll say
to-morrow when she sees that none of the ceiling has fallen."
Fortunately Aunt Sarah supplied an explanation herself--and nothing
could have shaken her belief in her own opinion. One of her windows was
dropped down half way from the top. She was sure that some "rascally
boy" outside (she glared at Neale O'Neil when she said it at the
breakfast table) had thrown crackers through the window. She had found
some of the crumbs.
"And I'll ketch him some day, and then----" She shook her head grimly
and relapsed into her accustomed silence.
So Neale did not have to confess his fault and try to make peace with
Aunt Sarah. It would have been impossible for him to do this last, Ruth
was sure.
But the story of the bag of crackers delighted Agnes. She teased Neale
about it unmercifully, and he showed himself to be better-natured and
more patient, than Ruth had at first supposed him to be.
The next few days following the appearance of Neale O'Neil at the old
Corner House were busy ones indeed. School would open the next week and
there was lots to do before that important event.
Brooms searched out dust, long-handled brushes searched out cobwebs, and
the first and second floors of the old Corner House were subjected to a
thorough renovation.
Above that the girls and Mrs. MacCall decided not to go. The third floor
rooms were scarcely ever entered, save by Sandyface and her kittens in
search of mice. As for the great garret that ran the full width of the
front of the house, _that_ had been cleaned so recently (at the time of
the "Ghost Party," which is told of in the first volume of this series)
that there was no necessity of mounting so high.
The stranger boy who had come to the old Corner House so opportunely,
proved himself of inestimable value in the work in hand. Uncle Rufus was
saved many a groan by that lively youth, and Mrs. MacCall and the girls
pronounced him a valuable assistant.
The young folk were resting on the back porch on Thursday afternoon,
chattering like magpies, when suddenly Neale O'Neil spied a splotch of
brilliant color coming along Willow Street.
"What do you call this?" demanded he. "Is it a locomotive headlight?"
"Oh! what a ribbon!" gasped Agnes.
"I declare!" said Tess, in her old-fashioned way. "That is Alfredia
Blossom. And what a great bow of ribbon she has tied on her head. It's
big enough for a sash, Dot."
"Looks like a house afire," commented Neale again.
By this time Alfredia's smiling face was recognizable under the flaming
red bow, and Ruth explained:
"She is one of Uncle Rufus' grand-daughters. Her mother, Petunia
Blossom, washes for us, and Alfredia is dragging home the wash in that
little wagon."
The ribbon, Alfredia wore was at least four inches wide and it was tied
in front at the roots of her kinky hair into a bow, the wings of which
stuck out on each side like a pair of elephant ears.
The little colored girl came in at the side gate, drawing the
wash-basket after her.
"How-do, Miss Ruthie--and Miss Aggie? How-do, Tessie and Dottie? You-all
gwine to school on Monday?"
"All of us are going, Alfredia," proclaimed Tess. "Are you going?"
"Mammy done said I could," said Alfredia, rolling her eyes. "But I dunno
fo' sho'."
"Why don't you know?" asked Agnes, the curious.
"Dunno as I got propah clo'es to wear, honey. Got ter look mighty
fetchin' ter go ter school--ya-as'm!"
"Is that why you've got that great bow on your head?" giggled Agnes. "To
make you look 'fetching'?"
"Naw'm. I put dat ol' red sash-bow up dar to 'tract 'tention."
"To attract attention?" repeated Ruth. "Why do you want to attract
attention?"
"I don't _wanter_, Miss Ruthie."
"Then why do you wear it?"
"So folkses will look at my haid."
Agnes and Neale were vastly amused, but Ruth pursued her inquiry. She
wished to get to the bottom of the mystery:
"Why do you want folks to look at your head, Alfredia?"
"So dey won't look at my feet. I done got holes in my shoes--an' dey is
Mammy's shoes, anyway. Do you 'spects I kin git by wid 'em on
Monday--for dey's de on'iest shoes I got ter wear?"
The Kenways laughed--they couldn't help it. But Ruth did not let the
colored girl go away without a pair of half-worn footwear of Agnes' that
came somewhere near fitting Alfredia.
"It's just so nice to have so many things that we can afford to give
some away," sighed Agnes. "My! my! but we ought to be four happy girls."
One of the Corner House girls was far from happy the next day. Dot came
down to breakfast with a most woebegone face, and tenderly caressing her
jaw. She had a toothache, and a plate of mush satisfied her completely
at the table.
"I--I can't che-e-e-ew!" she wailed, when she tried a bit of toast.
"I am ashamed of you, Dot," said Tess, earnestly. "That tooth is just a
little wabbly one, and you ought to have it pulled."
"Ow! don't you touch it!" shrieked Dot.
"I'm not going to," said Tess. "I was reaching for some more butter for
my toast--not for your tooth."
"We-ell!" confessed the smallest Kenway; "it just _jumps_ when anybody
comes toward it."
"Be a brave little girl and go with sister to the dentist," begged Ruth.
"No--please--Ruthie! I can't," wailed Dot.
"Let sister tie a stout thread around it, and you pull it out yourself,"
suggested Ruth, as a last resort.
Finally Dot agreed to this. That is, she agreed to have the thread tied
on. Neale climbed the back fence into Mr. Murphy's premises and obtained
a waxed-end of the cobbler. This, he said, would not slip, and Ruth
managed to fasten the thread to the root of the little tooth.
"One good jerk, and it's all over!" proclaimed Agnes.
But this seemed horrible to Dot. The tender little gum was sore, and the
nerve telegraphed a sense of acute pain to Dot's mind whenever she
touched the tooth. One good jerk, indeed!
"I tell you what to do," said Neale to the little girl. "You tie the
other end of that waxed-end to a doorknob, and sit down and wait.
Somebody will come through the door after a while and jerk the tooth
right out!"
"Oh!" gasped Dot.
"Go ahead and try it, Dot," urged Agnes. "I'm afraid you are a little
coward."
This accusation from her favorite sister made Dot feel very badly. She
betook herself to another part of the house, the black thread hanging
from her lips.
"What door are you going to sit behind, Dot?" whispered Tess. "I'll come
and do it--_just as easy!_"
"No, you sha'n't!" cried Dot. "You sha'n't know. And I don't want to
know who is going to j-j-jerk it out," and she ran away, sobbing.
Being so busy that morning, the others really forgot the little girl.
None of them saw her take a hassock, put it behind the sitting-room door
that was seldom opened, and after tying the string to the knob, seat
herself upon the hassock and wait for something to happen.
She waited. Nobody came near that room. The sun shone warmly in at the
windows, the bees buzzed, and Dot grew drowsy. Finally she fell fast
asleep with her tooth tied to the doorknob.
CHAPTER VI
AGNES LOSES HER TEMPER AND DOT HER TOOTH
It was on this morning--Friday, ever a fateful day according to the
superstitiously inclined--that the incident of the newspaper
advertisement arose.
The paper boy had very early thrown the Kenways' copy of the Milton
_Morning Post_ upon the front veranda. Aunt Sarah spent part of each
forenoon reading that gossipy sheet. She insisted upon seeing the paper
just as regularly as she insisted upon having her five cents' worth of
peppermint-drops to take to church in her pocket on Sunday morning.
But on this particular morning she did not take the paper in before
going to her room after breakfast, and Neale strolled out and picked up
the sheet.
Ruth was behind him, but he did not know of her presence. She had been
about to secure the morning paper and run upstairs with it, to save Aunt
Sarah the bother of coming down again. As she was about to ask the boy
for it, Ruth noticed that he was staring rigidly at the still folded
paper. His eyes were fixed upon something that appeared in the very
first column of the _Post_.
Now, the _Morning Post_ devoted the first column of its front page to
important announcements and small advertisements--like "Lost and Found,"
the death and marriage notices, and "personals." Agnes called it the
"Agony Column," for the "personals" always headed it.
Ruth was sure Neale was staring at something printed very near the top
of the column. He stood there, motionless, long enough to have read any
ordinary advertisement half a dozen times.
Then he laid the paper quietly on one of the porch chairs and tiptoed
off the veranda, disappearing around the corner of the house without
looking back once; so Ruth did not see his face.
"What can be the matter with him?" murmured Ruth, and seized the paper
herself.
She swiftly scrutinized the upper division of the first column of type.
There were the usual requests for the return of absent friends, and
several cryptic messages understood only by the advertiser and the
person to whom the message was addressed.
The second "Personal" was different. It read as follows:
STRAYED,OR RUNAWAY FROM HIS GUARDIAN:--Boy, 15, slight figure,
very light hair, may call himself Sorber, or Jakeway. His Guardian
will pay FIFTY DOLLARS for information of his safety, or for his
recovery. Address Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and
Menagerie, _en-route_.
Ruth read this through; but she read it idly. It made no more
appeal to her just then than did half a dozen of the other
advertisements--"personal," or otherwise.
So she carried the paper slowly upstairs, wondering all the time what
Neale O'Neil could have seen in the column of advertising to so affect
him. Perhaps had Agnes been at hand to discuss the matter, together the
girls might have connected the advertisement of the tow-headed boy with
Neale O'Neil.
But Agnes was out on an errand, and when she did return she was so full
herself of something which she wished to tell Ruth that she quite drove
thought of the white-haired boy, for the time being, out of the older
girl's mind. As soon as she saw Ruth she began her tale.
"What do you think, Ruthie Kenway? I just met Eva Larry on the Parade,
and that Trix Severn was with her. You know that Trix Severn?"
"Beatrice Severn? Yes," said Ruth, placidly. "A very well-dressed girl.
Her parents must be well off."
"Her father is Terrence Severn, and he keeps a summer hotel at Pleasant
Cove. But I don't like her. And I'm not going to like Eva if she makes a
friend of that Trix," cried Agnes, stormily.
"Now, Agnes! don't be foolish," admonished Ruth.
"You wait till you hear what that nasty Trix said to me--about us all!"
"Why, she can't hurt us--much--no matter what she says," Ruth declared,
still calmly.
"You can talk! I'm just going to tell Eva she needn't ask me to walk
with her again when Trix is with her. I came along behind them across
the Parade Ground and Eva called me. I didn't like Trix before, and I
tried to get away.
"'I've got to hurry, Eva,' I said. 'Mrs. MacCall is waiting for this
soap-powder.'
"'I should think you Corner House girls could afford to hire somebody to
run your errands, if you've got all the money they say you have,' says
Trix Severn--just like that!"
"What did you reply, Aggie!" asked the older Kenway girl.
"'It doesn't matter how much, or how little, money we have,' I told
her," said Agnes, "'there's no lazy-bones in our family, thank
goodness!' For Eva told me that Trix's mother doesn't get up till noon
and that their house is all at sixes and sevens."
"Oh! that sharp tongue of yours," said Ruth, admonishingly.
"I hope she took it," declared Agnes, savagely. "She said to me: 'Oh!
people who haven't been used to leisure don't really know how to enjoy
money, I suppose, when they _do_ get it.'
"'You needn't worry, Miss,' I said. 'We get all the fun there is going,
and don't have to be idle, either. And whoever told _you_ we weren't
used to money before we came to Milton?'"
"Fie! Fie, Aggie! That was in the worst possible taste," cried Ruth.
"I don't care," exclaimed Agnes, stormily. "She's a nasty thing! And
when I hurried on, I heard her laugh and say to Eva:
"'"Put a beggar on horseback," you know. Miss Titus, the dressmaker,
says those Kenways never had two cents to bless themselves with before
old crazy Peter Stower died and left them all that money.'"
"Well, dear, I wouldn't make a mountain out of a molehill," said Ruth,
quietly. "If you don't like Beatrice Severn, you need not associate with
her--not even if she is going to be in your grade at school. But I would
not quarrel with my best friend about her. That's hardly worth while, is
it?"
"I don't know whether I consider Eva Larry my best friend, or not," said
Agnes, reflectively. "Myra Stetson is lots nicer in some ways."
That was Agnes' way. She was forever having a "crush" on some girl or
other, getting suddenly over it, and seeking another affinity with
bewildering fickleness. Eva Larry had been proclaimed her dearest friend
for a longer term than most who had preceded her.
There was too much to do in completing the housecleaning task to spend
either breath, or time, in discussing Beatrice Severn and her impudent
tongue. A steady "rap, rap, rapping" from the back lawn told the story
of Neale and the parlor rugs.
"There!" cried Ruth, suddenly, from the top of the stepladder, where she
was wiping the upper shelves in the dining-room china closet. "There's
one rug in the sitting room I didn't take out last evening. Will you get
it, Aggie, and give it to Neale?"
Willing Agnes started at once. She literally ran to the sitting-room and
banged open the door.
All this time we have left Dot--and her sore tooth--behind this very
door! She had selected the wrong side of the door upon which to crouch,
waiting for Fate--in the person of an unknowing sister--to pull the
tooth.
The door opened inward, and against the slumbering little girl on the
hassock. Instead of jerking the tooth out by pulling open the door,
Agnes banged the door right against the unconscious Dot--and so hard
that Dot and her hassock were flung some yards out upon the floor. Her
forehead was bumped and a great welt raised upon it.
The smallest Kenway voiced her surprise and anguish in no uncertain
terms. Everybody in the house came running to the rescue. Even Aunt
Sarah came to the top of the stairs and wanted to know "if that young
one was killed?"
"No-o-o!" sobbed Dot, answering for herself. "No--no-o-o, Aunt Sarah.
_Not yet._"
But Mrs. MacCall had brought the arnica bottle and the bruise was soon
treated. While they were all comforting her, in staggered Neale with a
number of rugs on his shoulder.
"Hello!" he demanded. "Who's murdered this time?"
"Me," proclaimed Dot, with confidence.
"Oh-ho! Are you making all that noise about losing a little old tooth?
But you got it pulled, didn't you?"
Dot clapped a tentative finger into her mouth. When she drew it forth,
it was with a pained and surprised expression. The place where the tooth
should have been was empty.
"There it is," chuckled Neale, "hanging on the doorknob. Didn't I tell
you that was the way to get your tooth pulled?"
"My!" gasped Dot. "It wasn't pulled out of me, you see. When Aggie ran
in and knocked me over, _I was just putted away from the tooth_!"
They all burst out laughing at that, and Dot laughed with them. She
recovered more quickly from the loss of her tooth than Agnes did from
the loss of her temper!
CHAPTER VII
NEALE IN DISGUISE
The Parade Ground was in the center of Milton. Its lower end bordered
Willow Street, and the old Corner House was right across from the
termination of the Parade's principal shaded walk.
Ranged all around the Parade (which had in colonial days been called
"the training ground" where the local militia-hands drilled) were the
principal public buildings of the town, although the chief business
places were situated down Main Street, below the Corner House.
The brick courthouse with its tall, square tower, occupied a prominent
situation on the Parade. The several more important church edifices,
too, faced the great, open common. Interspersed were the better
residences of Milton. Some of these were far more modern than the old
Stower homestead, but to the Kenway girls none seemed more homelike in
appearance.
At the upper end of the Parade were grouped the schools of the town.
There was a handsome new high school that Ruth was going to enter; the
old one was now given over to the manual training departments. The
grammar and primary school was a large, sprawling building with plenty
of entrances and exits, and in this structure the other three Kenway
girls found their grades.
The quartette of Corner House girls were not the only young folk anxious
about entering the Milton schools for the forthcoming year. There was
Neale O'Neil. The Kenways knew by the way he spoke, that his expected
experiences at school were uppermost in his thoughts all the time.
Ruth had talked the matter over with Mrs. MacCall, although she had not
seen Mr. Howbridge, and they had decided that the boy was a very welcome
addition to the Corner House household, if he would stay.
But Neale O'Neil did not want charity--nor would he accept anything that
savored of it for long. Even while he was so busy helping the girls
clean house, he had kept his eyes and ears open for a permanent lodging.
And on Saturday morning he surprised Ruth by announcing that he would
leave them after supper that night.
"Why, Neale! where are you going?" asked the oldest Corner House girl.
"I am sure there is room enough for you here."
"I know all about that," said Neale, grinning quickly at her. "You folks
are the best ever."
"Then, why----?"
"I've made a dicker with Mr. Con Murphy. You see, I won't be far from
you girls if you want me any time," he pursued.
"You are going to live with Mr. Murphy?"
"Yes. He's got a spare room--and it's very neat and clean. There's a
woman comes in and 'does' for him, as he calls it. He needs a chap like
me to give him a hand now and then--taking care of the pig and his
garden, you know."
"Not in the winter, Neale," said Ruth, gently. "I hope you are not
leaving us for any foolish reason. You are perfectly welcome to stay.
You ought to know that."
"That is fine of you, Ruth," he said, gratefully. "But you don't _need_
me here. I can feel more independent over there at Murphy's. And I shall
be quite all right there, I assure you."
The house was now all to rights--"spick and span," Mrs. MacCall
said--and Saturday was given up to preparing for the coming school term.
It was the last day of the long vacation.
Dot had no loose tooth to worry her and she was busy, with Tess, in
preparing the dolls' winter nursery. All summer the little girls had
played in the rustic house in the garden, but now that September had
come, an out-of-door playroom would soon be too cold.
Although the great garret made a grand playroom for all hands on stormy
days, Ruth thought it too far for Dot and Tess to go to the top of the
house alone to play with their dolls. For her dolls were of as much
importance to Dot as her own eating or sleeping. She lived in a little
world of her own with the Alice-doll and all her other "children"; and
she no more thought of neglecting them for a day than she and Tess
neglected Billy Bumps or the cats.
There was no means of heating the garret, so a room in the wing with
their bed chambers, and which was heated from the cellar furnace, was
given up to "the kiddies'" nursery.
There were many treasures to be taken indoors, and Dot and Tess toiled
out of the garden, and up the porch steps, and through the hall, and
climbed the stairs to the new playroom--oh! so many times.
Mr. Stetson, the groceryman, came with an order just as Dot was toiling
along with an armful to the porch.
"Hello! hello!" he exclaimed. "Don't you want some help with all that
load, Miss Dorothy?" She was a special favorite of his, and he always
stopped to talk with her.
"Ruthie says we got to move all by ourselves--Tess and me," said Dot,
with a sigh. "I'm just as much obliged to you, but I guess you can't
help."
She had sat down on the porch steps and Sandyface came, purring, to rub
against her.
"You can go right away, Sandy!" said Dot, sternly. "I don't like
you--much. You went and sat right down in the middle of my Alice-doll's
old cradle, and on her best knit coverlet, and went to sleep--and you're
moulting! I'll never get the hairs off of that quilt."
"Moulting, eh!" chuckled Mr. Stetson. "Don't you mean shedding?"
"We--ell, maybe," confessed Dot. "But the hens' feathers are coming out
and they're moulting--I heard Ruth say so. So why not cats? Anyway, you
can go away, Sandyface, and stop rubbing them off on _me_."
"What's become of that kitten of yours--Bungle, did you call it?" asked
the groceryman.
"Why, don't you know?" asked Dot, in evident surprise.
"I haven't heard a word," confessed Mr. Stetson. "Did something happen
to it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Was it poisoned?"
"Oh, no!"
"Drowned?"
"No, sir."
"Did somebody steal it?" queried Mr. Stetson.
"No, indeed!"
"Was it hurt in any way?"
"No, sir."
"Well, then," said the groceryman, "I can't guess. What _did_ happen to
Bungle?"
"Why," said Dot, "he growed into a cat!"
That amused Mr. Stetson immensely, and he went away, laughing. "It seems
to me," Dot said, seriously, to Tess, "that it don't take so much to
make grown-up people laugh. Is it funny for a kitten to grow into a
cat?"
Neale disappeared for some time right after dinner. He had done all he
could to help Uncle Rufus and Mrs. MacCall that forenoon, and had
promised Ruth to come back for supper. "I wouldn't miss Mrs. MacCall's
beans and fishcakes for a farm!" he declared, laughing.
But he did not laugh as much as he had when he first came to the old
Corner House. Ruth, at least, noticed the change in him, and, "harking
back," she began to realize that the change had begun just after Neale
had been so startled by the advertisment he had read in the _Morning
Post_.
The two older Kenway girls had errands to do at some of the Main Street
stores that afternoon. It was Agnes who came across Neale O'Neil in the
big pharmacy on the corner of Ralph Street. He was busily engaged with a
clerk at the rear of the store.
"Hello, Neale!" cried Agnes. "What you buying?" Sometimes Agnes'
curiosity went beyond her good manners.
"I'll take this kind," said Neale, hurriedly, touching a bottle at
random, and then turned his back on the counter to greet Agnes. "An
ounce of question-powders to make askits," he said to her, with a grave
and serious air. "_You_ don't need any, do you?"
"Funny!"
"But I don't _look_ as funny as you do," chuckled Neale O'Neil. "That's
the most preposterous looking hat I ever saw, Aggie. And those
rabbit-ears on it!"
"Tow-head!" responded Agnes, with rather crude repartee.
Neale did not usually mind being tweaked about his flaxen hair--at
least, not by the Corner House girls, but Agnes saw his expression
change suddenly, and he turned back to the clerk and received his
package without a word.
"Oh, you needn't get mad," she said, quickly.
"I'm not," responded Neale, briefly, but he paid for his purchase and
hurried away without further remark. Agnes chanced to notice that the
other bottles the clerk was returning to the shelves were all samples of
dyes and "hair-restorers."
"Maybe he's buying something for Mr. Murphy. Mr. Murphy is awfully bald
on top," thought Agnes, and that's all she _did_ think about it until
the next day.
The girls had invited Neale to go to their church, with them and he had
promised to be there. But when they filed in just before the sermon they
saw nothing of the white-haired boy standing about the porch with the
other boys.
"There's somebody in our pew," whispered Tess to Ruth.
"Aunt Sarah?"
"No. Aunt Sarah is in her own seat across the aisle," said Agnes. "Why!
it's a boy."
"It's Neale O'Neil," gasped Ruth. "But _what_ has he done to his hair?"
A glossy brown head showed just above the tall back of the old-fashioned
pew. The sun shining through the long windows on the side of the church
shone upon Neale's thick thatch of hair with iridescent glory. Whenever
he moved his head, the hue of the hair seemed to change--like a piece of
changeable silk!
"That can't be him," said Agnes, with awe. "Where's all his lovely
flaxen hair?"
"The foolish boy! He's dyed it," said Ruth, and then they reached the
pew and could say no more.
Neale had taken the far corner of the pew, so the girls and Mrs. MacCall
filed in without disturbing him. Agnes punched Neale with her elbow and
scowled at him.
"What did you want to do that for?" she hissed.
"Do what for?" he responded, trying to look unconscious.
"You know. Fix your hair like that?"
"Because you called me 'tow-head,'" he whispered, grinning.
When Mrs. MacCall caught her first glimpse of him when they got up to
sing, she started, stared, and almost expressed her opinion aloud.
"What under the canopy's the matter with that boy's head?" she whispered
to Ruth when they were seated again.
And there was reason for asking! As the service proceeded and Neale's
hair grew dryer, the sun shining upon his head revealed a wealth of
iridescence that attracted more attention than the minister's sermon.
The glossy brown gave way before a greenish tinge that changed to purple
at the roots. The dye would have been a success for an Easter egg, but
as an application to the hair, it was not an unqualified delight--at
least, not to the user.
The more youthful and thoughtless of the congregation--especially those
behind the unconscious Neale--found amusement enough in the exhibition.
The pastor discovered it harder than ever that morning to hold the
attention of certain irreverent ones, and being a near-sighted man, he
was at fault as to the reason for the bustle that increased as his
sermon proceeded.
The Corner House girls--especially Ruth and Agnes--began to feel the
matter acutely. Neale was quite unconscious of the result of the dye
upon his hair. As the minutes passed and the rainbow effect became more
and more visible, the disturbance became more pronounced.
Suddenly there sounded the important creaking of Deacon Abel's boots
down the aisle. Agnes flashed a look over her shoulder. The stern old
deacon was aiming straight for their pew!
CHAPTER VIII
INTRODUCTIONS
"Oh, goodness to gracious! Here comes old Mr. Abel--and he has fire in
his eye, Ruth!" gasped Agnes.
"What--what's he going to do?" stammered Ruth, clinging to Agnes' hand
under the hymn-book which they shared together.
"Something awful! Poor Neale!"
"His head looks a fright," declared Ruth.
"And everybody's laughing," groaned Agnes.
"Girls!" admonished Mrs. MacCall, "try to behave."
The creaking of the deacon's boots drew near. Old Mr. Abel kept a
cut-price shoe shop and it was a joke among the young folk of Milton
that all the shoes he sold were talking shoes, for when you walked in
them they said very plainly:
"Cheap! cheap! cheap!"
Soon the minister noted the approach of Deacon Abel. As the old man
stopped by the Kenway pew, the minister lost the thread of his
discourse, and stopped. A dread silence fell upon the church.
The deacon leaned forward in front of the little girls and Mrs. MacCall.
His face was very red, and he shook an admonitory finger at the startled
Neale O'Neil.
"Young man!" he said, sonorously. "Young man, you take off that wig and
put it in your pocket--or leave this place of worship immediately."
It was an awful moment--especially awful for everybody in the Kenway
pew. The girls' cheeks burned. Mrs. MacCall glared at the boy in utter
stupefaction.
Deacon Abel was a very stern man indeed--much more so than the clergyman
himself. All the young folk of the congregation stood in particular awe
of him.
But poor Neale O'Neil, unconscious of any wrong intent, merely gazed at
the old gentleman in surprise. "Wha--wha--_what_?" he gasped.
"Get out of here, young man!" exclaimed the deacon. "You have got the
whole crowd by the ears. A most disgraceful exhibition. If I had the
warming of your jacket I certainly would be glad."
"Oh!" exclaimed Ruth, horrified.
Agnes was really angry. She was an impulsive girl and she could not fail
to espouse the cause of anybody whom she considered "put upon." She rose
right up when Neale stumbled to his feet.
"Never you mind, Neale!" she whispered, shrilly. "He's a mean old thing!
I'm coming, too."
It was a very wrong thing to say, but Agnes never stopped to think how a
thing was going to sound when she was angry. The boy, his face aflame,
got out through the next pew, which chanced to be empty, and Agnes
followed right on behind him before Ruth could pull her back into her
seat.
Nobody could have stopped her. She felt that Neale O'Neil was being
ill-treated, and whatever else you could say about Aggie Kenway, you
could not truthfully say that she was not loyal to her friends.
"Cheap! cheap! cheap!" squeaked the deacon's boots as he went back up
one aisle while the boy and girl hurried up the other. It seemed to
Neale as though the church was filled with eyes, staring at him.
His red face was a fine contrast for his rainbow-hued hair, but Agnes
was as white as chalk.
The minister took up his discourse almost immediately, but it seemed to
the culprits making their way to the door as though the silence had held
the congregation for an hour! They were glad to get through the baize
doors and let them swing together behind them.
Neale clapped his cap on his head, hiding a part of the ruin, but Deacon
Abel came out and attacked him hotly:
"What do you mean by such disgraceful actions, boy?" he asked, with
quivering voice. "I don't know who you are--you are a stranger to me;
but I warn you never to come here and play such jokes again----"
"It isn't a joke, Mr. Abel!" cried Agnes.
"What do you call it, then? Isn't that one of them new-fangled wigs I
read folks in the city wear to dances and other affairs? What's he got
it on for?"
"It isn't a wig," Agnes said, while Neale clutched wildly at his hair.
"Don't tell me it's his own hair!" almost shouted the old gentleman.
"What's the matter with my hair?" demanded the puzzled boy.
"Doesn't he know? Do you mean to say he doesn't know what his head looks
like?" cried the amazed deacon. "Come! come into this room, boy, and
look at your hair."
There was the ushers' dressing-room at one end of the vestibule; he led
Neale in by the arm. In the small mirror on the wall the boy got a
fairly accurate picture of his hirsute adornment.
Without a word--after his first gasp of amazement--Neale turned and
walked out of the room, and out of the church. It was a hot Sunday and
the walks were bathed in sunshine. Neale involuntarily took the path
across the Parade in the direction of the old Corner House.
At this hour--in the middle of sermon time--there was scarcely anybody
in sight. Milton observed Sunday most particularly--especially in this
better quarter of the town.
Neale had gone some way before he realized that Agnes was just beside
him. He looked around at her and now his face was very pale.
"What did you come for?" he asked her, ungraciously enough.
"I'm so sorry, Neale," the girl whispered, drawing nearer to his elbow.
The boy stared for a moment, and then exclaimed: "Why, Aggie! you're a
good little sport, all right."
Aggie blushed vividly, but she hastened to say: "Why did you do it,
Neale?"
"I--I can't tell you," replied the boy, in some confusion. "Only I got
to change the color of my hair."
"But, mercy! you needn't have changed it to so many colors all at once!"
cried she.
"Huh! do you think--like that old man--that I did it a-purpose?"
"But you _did_ dye it!"
"I tried to."
"That was the stuff you were buying yesterday in the drugstore?" she
queried.
"Yes. And I put it on just before I started for church. He said it would
make the hair a beautiful brown."
"_Who_ said so?"
"That drugstore clerk," said Neale, despondently.
"He never sold you hair-dye at all!"
"Goodness knows what it was----"
"It's stained your collar--and it's run down your neck and dyed _that_
green."
"Do you suppose I can ever get it off, Aggie?" groaned the boy.
"We'll try. Come on home and we'll get a lot of soapsuds in a tub in the
woodshed--so we can splash it if we want to," said the suddenly
practical Agnes.
They reached the woodshed without being observed by Uncle Rufus. Agnes
brought the water and the soap and a hand-brush from the kitchen. Neale
removed his collar and tie, and turned back the neck of his shirt. Agnes
aproned her Sunday frock and went to work.
But, sad to relate, the more she scrubbed, and the more Neale suffered,
the worse his hair looked!
"Goodness, Aggie!" he gasped at last. "My whole scalp is as sore as a
boil. I don't believe I can stand your scrubbing it any more."
"I don't mean to hurt you, Neale," panted Agnes.
"I know it. But isn't the color coming out?"
"I--I guess it's _set_. Maybe I've done more harm than good. It's a sort
of a sickly green all over. I never _did_ see such a head of hair,
Neale! And it was so pretty before."
"_Pretty!_" growled Neale O'Neil. "It was a nuisance. Everybody who ever
saw me remembered me as the 'white-haired boy.'"
"Well," sighed Agnes, "whoever sees that hair of yours _now_ will
remember you, and no mistake."
"And I have to go to school with it to-morrow," groaned Neale.
"It will grow out all right--in time," said the girl, trying to be
comforting.
"It'll take more time than I want to spend with green hair," returned
Neale. "I see what I'll have to do, Aggie."
"What's that?"
"Get a Riley cut. I don't know but I'd better be _shaved_."
"Oh, Neale! you'll look so funny," giggled Agnes, suddenly becoming
hysterical.
"That's all right. You have a right to laugh," said Neale, as Agnes fell
back upon a box to have her laugh out. "But I won't be any funnier
looking with _no_ hair than I would be with green hair--make up your
mind to that."
Neale slipped over the back fence into Mr. Murphy's premises, before the
rest of the Kenway family came home, and the girls did not see him again
that day.
"How the folks stared at us!" Ruth said, shaking her head. "It would
have been all right if you hadn't gotten up and gone out with him,
Aggie."
"Oh, yes! let that horrid old Deacon Abel put him out of church just as
though he were a stray dog, and belonged to nobody!" cried Agnes.
"Well, he doesn't belong to us, does he?" asked Dot, wonderingly.
"We're the only folks he has, I guess, Dot," said Tess, as Agnes went
off with her head in the air.
"He has Mr. Murphy--and the pig," said Dot, slowly. "But I like Neale.
Only I wish he hadn't painted his hair so funny."
"I'd like to have boxed his ears--that I would!" said Mrs. MacCall, in
vexation. "I thought gals was crazy enough nowadays; but to think of a
_boy_ dyeing his hair!"
Aunt Sarah shook her head and pursed her lips, as one who would say, "I
knew that fellow would come to some bad end." But Uncle Rufus, having
heard the story, chuckled unctuously to himself.
"Tell yo' what, chillen," he said to the girls, "it 'mind me ob de time
w'en my Pechunia was a young, flighty gal. Dese young t'ings, dey ain't
nebber satisfied wid de way de good Lawd make 'em.
"I nebber did diskiver w'y Pechunia was so brack, as I say afore. But
'tain't an affliction. She done t'ink it was. She done talk erbout
face-bleach, an' powder, an' somet'ing she call 'rooch' wot white
sassiety wimmens fixes up deir faces wid, an' says she ter me, 'Pap, I
is gwine fin' some ob dese yere fixin's fur my complexion.'
"'Yo' go 'long,' I says ter her. 'Yo's a _fast_ brack, an' dat's all
dere is to hit. Ef all de watah an' soap yo' done use ain't take no
particle of dat soot off'n yo' yit, dere ain't nottin' eber _will_
remove it.'
"But yo' kyan't change a gal's natur. Pechunia done break her back ober
de washtub ter earn de money to buy some o' dem make-up stuff, an' she
goes down ter de drug sto' ter mak' her purchases. She 'low ter spen'
much as six bits fer de trash.
"An' firs' t'ing she axed for was face powder--aw, my glo-_ree_! De
clerk ask her: 'Wot shade does yo' want, Ma'am? An' Pechunia giggles an'
replies right back:
"'Flesh color, Mister.'
"An' wot you t'ink dat young scalawag ob a clerk gib her?" chuckled
Uncle Rufus, rolling his eyes and shaking his head in delight. "W'y, he
done gib her _powdered charcoal_! Dat finish Pechunia. She nebber tried
to buy nottin' mo' for her complexion--naw, indeedy!"
The girls of the old Corner House learned that Neale was up early on
Monday morning, having remained in hiding the remainder of Sunday. He
sought out a neighbor who had a pair of sheep-shears, and Mr. Murphy
cropped the boy's hair close to his scalp. The latter remained a
pea-green color and being practically hairless, Neale looked worse than
a Mexican dog!
He was not at all the same looking youth who had dawned on Agnes' vision
the Monday morning previous, and had come to her rescue. She said
herself she never would have known him.
"Oh, dear!" she said to Ruth. "He looks like a gnome out of a funny
picture-book."
But Neale O'Neil pulled his cap down to his ears and followed behind the
Kenway girls to school. He was too proud and too sensitive to walk with
them.
He knew that he was bound to be teased by the boys at school, when once
they saw his head. Even the old cobbler had said to him:
"'Tis a foine lookin' noddle ye have now. Ye look like a tinder grane
onion sproutin' out of the garden in the spring. Luk out as ye go over
th' fince, me la-a-ad, for if that ormadhoun of a goat sees ye, he'll
ate ye alive!"
This was at the breakfast table, and Neale had flushed redly, being half
angry with the old fellow.
"That's right, la-a-ad," went on Mr. Murphy. "Blushin' ain't gone out o'
fashion where you kem from, I'm glad ter see. An' begorra! ye're more
pathriotic than yer name implies, for I fear that's Scotch instead of
Irish. I see now ye've put the grane above the red!"
So Neale went to school on this first day in no very happy frame of
mind. He looked so much different with his hair cropped, from what he
had at church on Sunday, that few of the young folks who had observed
his disgrace there, recognized him--for which the boy was exceedingly
glad.
He remained away from the Kenway girls, and in that way escaped
recognition. He had to get acquainted with some of the
fellows--especially those of the highest grammar grade. Being a new
scholar, he had to meet the principal of the school, as well as Miss
Shipman.
"Take your cap off, sir," said Mr. Marks, sternly. Unwillingly enough he
did so. "For goodness' sake! what have you been doing to your head?"
demanded the principal.
"Getting my hair clipped, sir," said Neale.
"But the color of your head?"
"That's why I had the hair clipped."
"What did you do to it?"
"It was an accident, sir," said Neale. "But I can study just as well."
"We will hope so," said the principal, his eyes twinkling. "But green is
not a promising color."
Ruth had taken Dot to the teacher of the first grade, primary, and Dot
was made welcome by several little girls whom she had met at Sunday
school during the summer. Then Ruth hurried to report to the principal
of the Milton High School, with whom she had already had an interview.
Tess found her grade herself. It was the largest room in the whole
building and was presided over by Miss Andrews--a lady of most uncertain
age and temper, and without a single twinkle in her grey-green eyes.
But with Tess were several girls she knew--Mable Creamer; Margaret and
Holly Pease; Maria Maroni, whose father kept the vegetable and fruit
stand in the cellar of one of the Stower houses on Meadow Street; Uncle
Rufus' granddaughter, Alfredia (with the big red ribbon bow); and a
little Yiddish girl named Sadie Goronofsky, who lived with her
step-mother and a lot of step-brothers and sisters in another of the
tenements on Meadow Street which had been owned so many years by Uncle
Peter Stower.
Agnes and Neale O 'Neil met in the same grade, but they did not have a
chance to speak, for the boys sat on one side of the room, and the girls
on the other.
The second Kenway girl had her own troubles. During the weeks she lived
at the old Corner House, she had been looking forward to entering school
in the fall, so she had met all the girls possible who were to be in her
grade.
Now she found that, school having opened, the girls fell right back into
their old associations. There were the usual groups, or cliques. She
would have to earn her place in the school, just as though she did not
know a soul.
Beatrice, or "Trix" Severn, was not one of those whom Agnes was anxious
to be friendly with; and here Trix was in the very seat beside her,
while Eva Larry and Myra Stetson were across the room!
The prospect looked cloudy to Agnes, and she began the first school
session with less confidence than any of her sisters.
CHAPTER IX
POPOCATEPETL IN MISCHIEF
Miss Georgiana Shipman was a plump lady in a tight bodice--short, dark,
with a frankly double chin and eyes that almost always smiled. She did
not possess a single beautiful feature; yet that smile of
hers--friendly, appreciative of one's failings as well as one's
successes--that smile cloaked a multitude of short-comings.
One found one's self loving Miss Georgiana--if one was a girl--almost at
once; and the boldest and most unruly boy dropped his head and was
ashamed to make Miss Georgiana trouble.
Sometimes boys with a long record of misdeeds behind them in other
grades--misdeeds that blackened the pages of other teachers' deportment
books--somehow managed to reach the door of Miss Georgiana's room
without being dismissed from the school by the principal. Once having
entered the favored portal, their characters seemed to change magically.
Mr. Marks knew that if he could bring the most abandoned scapegrace
along in his studies so that he could spend a year with Miss Georgiana
Shipman, in nine cases out of ten these hard-to-manage boys would be
saved to the school. Sometimes they graduated at the very top of their
classes.
Just as though Miss Georgiana were a fairy god-mother who struck her
crutch upon the platform and cried: "Se sesame! _change!_" the young
pirates often came through Miss Georgiana's hands and entered high
school with the reputation of being very decent fellows after all.
Nor was Miss Georgiana a "softie"; far from it. Ask the boys themselves
about it? Oh! they would merely hang their heads, and scrape a foot back
and forth on the rug, and grunt: "Aw! Miss Shipman understands a
fellow."
Her influence over the girls was even greater. She expected you to learn
your lessons, and if you were lazy she spent infinite pains in urging
you on. And if you did not work, Miss Georgiana felt aggrieved, and that
made any nice girl feel dreadfully mean! Besides, you took up more of
the teacher's time than you had any right to, and the other girls
declared it was not fair, and talked pretty harshly about you.
If Miss Georgiana had to remain after school for any reason, more than
half of her girls would be sure to hang around the school entrance until
she came out, and then they all trailed home with her.
When you saw a bevy of girls from twelve to fourteen years of age, or
thereabout, massed on one of the shady walks of the Parade soon after
school closed for the day, or chattering along Whipple Street on which
Miss Georgiana Shipman lived, you might be sure that the teacher of the
sixth grade, grammar, was in the center of the group.
Miss Georgiana lived with her mother--a little old lady in Quaker
dress--in a small cottage back from the street-line. There were three
big oaks in the front yard, and no grass ever could be coaxed to grow
under them, for the girls kept it worn down to the roots.
There were seats at the roots of the three huge trees in the open
season, and it was an odd afternoon indeed that did not find a number of
girls here. To be invited to stay to tea at Miss Georgiana's was the
height of every girl's ambition who belonged in Number Six.
Nor did the girls when graduated, easily forget Miss Georgiana. She had
their confidence and some of them came to her with troubles and
perplexities that they could have exposed to nobody else.
Of course, girls who had "understanding" mothers, did not need this
special inspiration and help, but it was noticeable that girls who had
no mothers at all, found in the little, plump, rather dowdy "old maid
school teacher" one of those choice souls that God has put on earth to
fulfil the duties of parents taken away.
Miss Georgiana Shipman had been teaching for twenty years, but she had
never grown old. And her influence was--to use a trite description--like
a stone flung into a still pool of water; the ever widening circles set
moving by it lapped the very outer shores of Milton life.
Of course Agnes Kenway was bound to fall in love with this teacher; and
Miss Georgiana soon knew her for just the "stormy petrel" that she was.
Agnes gravitated to scrapes as naturally as she breathed, but she got
out of them, too, as a usual thing without suffering any serious harm.
Trix Severn annoyed her. Trix had it in her power to bother the next to
the oldest Corner House girl, sitting as she did at the nearest desk.
The custom was, in verbal recitation, for the pupil to rise in her (or
his) seat and recite. When it came Agnes' time to recite, Trix would
whisper something entirely irrelevant to the matter before the class.
This sibilant monologue was so nicely attuned by Trix that Miss
Georgiana (nor many of the girls besides Agnes herself) did not hear it.
But it got on Agnes' nerves and one afternoon, before the first week of
school was over, she turned suddenly on the demure Trix in the middle of
her recitation and exclaimed, hysterically:
"If you don't stop whispering that way, Trix Severn, I'll just go mad!"
"Agnes!" ejaculated Miss Shipman. "What does this mean?"
"I don't care!" cried Agnes, stormily. "She interrupts me----"
"Didn't either!" declared Trix, thereby disproving her own statement in
that particular case, at least. "I didn't speak to her."
"You did!" insisted Agnes.
"Agnes! sit down," said Miss Shipman, and sternly enough, for the whole
room was disturbed. "What _were_ you doing, Beatrice?"
"Just studying, Miss Shipman," declared Trix, with perfect innocence.
"This is not the time for study, but for recitation. You need not
recite, and I will see both of you after school. Go on from where Agnes
left off, Lluella."
"I'll fix you for this!" hissed Trix to Agnes. Agnes felt too badly to
reply and the jealous girl added: "You Corner House girls think you are
going to run things in this school, I suppose; but you'll see, Miss!
You're nothing but upstarts."
Agnes did not feel like repeating this when Miss Georgiana made her
investigation of the incident after school. She was no "tell-tale."
Therefore she repeated only her former accusation that Trix's whispering
had confused her in her recitation.
"I never whispered to her!" snapped Trix, tossing her head. "I'm not so
fond of her as all that, I hope."
"Why, I expect all my girls to be fond of each other," said Miss
Georgiana, smiling, "too, too fond to hurt each other's feelings, or
even to annoy each other."
"She just put it all on," sniffed Trix.
"Agnes is nervous," said the teacher, quietly, "but she must learn to
control her nerves and not to fly into a passion and be unladylike.
Beatrice, you must not whisper and annoy your neighbors. I hope you two
girls will never take part in such an incident again while you are with
me."
Agnes said, "I'm sorry, Miss Shipman," but when the teacher's back was
turned, Trix screwed her face into a horrid mask and ran out her tongue
at Agnes. Her spitefulness fairly boiled over.
This was the first day Agnes had been late getting home, so she missed
the first part of an incident of some moment. Popocatepetl got herself
on this day into serious mischief.
Popocatepetl (she was called "Petal" for short) was one of Sandyface's
four kittens that had been brought with the old cat from Mr. Stetson's
grocery to the old Corner House, soon after the Kenway girls came to
live there. Petal was Ruth's particular pet--or, had been, when she was
a kitten. Agnes' choice was the black one with the white nose, called
Spotty; Tess's was Almira, while Dot's--as we already know--was called
Bungle, and which, to Dot's disgust, had already "grown up."
All four of the kittens were good sized cats now, but they were not yet
of mature age and now and then the girls were fairly convulsed with
laughter because of the antics of Sandyface's quartette of children.
There was to be a pair of ducks for Sunday's dinner and Uncle Rufus had
carefully plucked them into a box in a corner of the kitchen, so that
the down would not be scattered. Mrs. MacCall was old-fashioned enough
to save all duck and geese down for pillows.
When the oldest and the two youngest Kenway girls trooped into the
kitchen, Popocatepetl was chasing a stray feather about the floor and in
diving behind the big range for it, she knocked down the shovel, tongs
and poker, which were standing against the bricked-up fireplace.
The clatter scared Petal immensely, and with tail as big as three
ordinary tails and fur standing erect upon her back, she shot across the
kitchen and into the big pantry.
Uncle Rufus had just taken the box of feathers into this room and set it
down on the floor, supposedly out of the way. Mrs. MacCall was measuring
molasses at the table, for a hot gingerbread-cake was going to grace the
supper-table.
"Scat, you cat, you!" exclaimed Uncle Rufus. "Dar's too many of you cats
erbout disher house, an' dat's a fac'. Dar's more cats dan dar is mices
to ketch--ya-as'm!"
"Oh, Uncle Rufus! you don't mean that, do you?" asked Tess, the literal.
"Aren't there as many as five mice left? You know you said yourself
there were hundreds before Sandyface and her children came."
"Glo-_ree_! I done s'peck dey got down to purty few numbers," agreed
Uncle Rufus. "Hi! wot dat cat do now?"
"Scat!" cried Mrs. MacCall. She had left the table for a moment, and
Popocatepetl was upon it.
"Petal!" shrieked Ruth, and darted for the pantry to seize her pet.
All three scolding her, and making for her, made Popocatepetl quite
hysterical. She arched her back, spit angrily, and then dove from the
table. In her flight she overturned the china cup of molasses which fell
to the floor and broke. The sticky liquid was scattered far and wide.
"That kitten!" Mrs. MacCall shrieked.
"Wait! wait!" begged Ruth, trying to grab up Petal.
But the cat dodged her and went right through the molasses on the floor.
All her four paws were covered. Wherever she stepped she left an
imprint. And when the excited Ruth grabbed for her again, she capped her
ridiculous performance by leaping right into the box of feathers!
Finding herself hopelessly "stuck-up" now, Popocatepetl went completely
crazy!
She leaped from the box, scattering a trail of sticky feathers behind
her. She made a single lap around the kitchen trying for an outlet,
faster than any kitten had ever traveled before in that room.
"Stop her!" shrieked Ruth.
"My clean kitchen!" wailed Mrs. MacCall.
"Looker dem fedders! looker dem fedders!" gasped Uncle Rufus. "She done
got dem all stuck on her fo' sho'!"
"Oh, oh!" squealed Tess and Dot, in chorus, and clinging together as
Petal dashed past them.
Just at this moment Agnes opened the door and saw what appeared to be an
animated feather-boa dashing about the kitchen, with the bulk of the
family in pursuit.
"What for goodness' sake is the matter?" gasped Agnes.
Popocatepetl saw the open door and she went through it as though she had
been shot out of a gun, leaving a trail of feathers in her wake and
splotches of molasses all over the kitchen floor.
CHAPTER X
THE ICE STORM
The four girls followed Popocatepetl out of the house in a hurry. Their
shrill voices aroused Neale O'Neil where he was spading up a piece of
Mr. Con Murphy's garden for a planting of winter spinach. He came over
the fence in a hurry and ran up the long yard.
"What's the matter? What's the matter?" he shouted.
The chorus of explanation was so confused that Neale might never have
learned the difficulty to this very moment, had he not looked up into
the bare branches of the Keifer pear tree and seen an object clinging
close to a top limb.
"For pity's sake!" he gasped. "What is that?"
"It's Petal," shrilled Dot. "An' she's felled into the merlasses and got
herself all feathers."
At that her sisters burst out laughing. It was too bad the little cat
was so frightened, but it _was_ too comical for anything!
"You don't call that a cat?" demanded Neale, when he could control his
own risibilities.
"Of course it's a cat," said Tess, rather warmly. "You know Ruthie's
Popocatepetl, Neale--you know you do."
"But a thing with feathers, roosting in a tree, must be some kind of a
fowl--yes?" asked Neale, with gravity.
"It's a cat-bird," announced Agnes.
The younger girls could not see any fun in the situation. Poor Petal,
clinging to the high branch of the tree, and faintly mewing, touched
their hearts, so Neale went up like a professional acrobat and after
some difficulty brought the frightened cat down.
"She'll have to be plucked just like a chicken," declared Ruth. "Did you
_ever_ see such a mess in all your life?"
Neale held the cat so she could not scratch, and Agnes and Ruth
"plucked" her and wiped off the molasses as best they could. But it was
several days before Popocatepetl was herself again.
By this time, too, Neale O'Neil's green halo was beginning to wear off.
As Mr. Con Murphy said, he looked less like "a blushin' grane onion"
than he had immediately after the concoction the drugstore clerk had
sold him took effect.
"And 'tis hopin' 'twill be a lesson ye'll allus remimber," pursued the
old cobbler. "Niver thrust too much to whativer comes in a bottle!
Remimber 'tis not the label ye air to use. The only r'ally honest label
that kems out of a drug-sthore is thim that has the skull and crossbones
on 'em. You kin be sure of them; they're pizen an' no mistake!"
Neale had to listen to a good deal that was harder to bear than any of
Mr. Murphy's quaint philosophy. But he restrained himself and did not
fight any boy going to school.
In the first place, Neale O'Neil was going to school for just one
purpose. He wished to learn. To boys and girls who had always had the
advantages of school, this desire seemed strange enough. They could not
understand Neale.
And because of his earnestness about study, and because he refused to
tell anything about himself, they counted Neale odd. The Corner House
girls were the only real friends the boy had in Milton among the young
folk. But some older people began to count Neale as a boy of promise.
Green as his head was dyed, it was a perfectly good head when it came to
study, as he had assured Mr. Marks. The principal watched the youngster
and formed a better opinion of him than he had at first borne. Miss
Shipman found him a perfectly satisfactory scholar.
The people he worked for at odd jobs, after and before school, learned
that he was faithful and smart. Mr. Con Murphy had a good word for the
boy to everybody who came into his shop.
Yet, withal, he could not make close friends. One must give confidence
for confidence if one wishes to make warm friendships. And Neale was as
secretive as he could be.
Neale kept close to the neighborhood of the cobbler's and the old Corner
House. Agnes told Ruth that she believed Neale never turned a corner
without first peeking around it! He was always on the _qui
vive_--expecting to meet somebody of whom he was afraid. And every
morning he ran over to the Corner House early and looked at the first
column on the front page of the _Morning Post_, as it lay on the big
veranda.
The four Corner House girls all achieved some distinction in their
school grades within the first few weeks of the fall term. Ruth made
friends as she always did wherever she went. Other girls did not get a
sudden "crush" on Ruth Kenway, and then as quickly forget her.
Friendship for her was based upon respect and admiration for her sense
and fine qualities of character.
Agnes fought her way as usual to the semi-leadership of her class, Trix
Severn to the contrary notwithstanding. She was not quite as good
friends with Eva Larry as she had been, and had soon cooled a trifle
toward Myra Stetson, but there were dozens of other girls to pick and
choose from, and in rotation Agnes became interested in most of those in
her grade.
Tess was the one who came home with the most adventures to tell. There
always seemed to be "something doing" in Miss Andrews' room.
"We're all going to save our money toward a Christmas tree for our
room," Tess announced, long before cold weather had set in "for keeps."
"Miss Andrews says we can have one, but those that aren't good can have
nothing to do with it. I'm afraid," added Tess, seriously, "that not
many of the boys in our grade will have anything to do with that tree."
"Is Miss Andrews so dreadfully strict?" asked Dot, round-eyed.
"Yes, she is--awful!"
"I hope she'll get married, then, and leave school before I get into her
grade."
"But maybe she won't ever marry," Tess declared.
"Don't all ladies marry--some time?" queried Dot, in surprise.
"Aunt Sarah never did, for one."
"Oh--well----Don't you suppose there's enough men to go 'round, Tess?"
cried Dot, in some alarm. "Wouldn't it be dreadful to grow up like Aunt
Sarah--or your Miss Andrews?"
Tess tossed her head. "I am going to be a suffragette," she announced.
"They don't have to have husbands. Anyway, if they have them," qualified
Tess, "they don't never bother about them much!"
Tess' mind, however, was full of that proposed Christmas tree. Maria
Maroni was going to bring an orange for each pupil--girls and boys
alike--to be hung on the tree. Her father had promised her that.
Alfredia Blossom, Jackson Montgomery Simms Blossom, and Burne-Jones
Whistler Blossom had stored bushels of hickory nuts and butternuts in
the cockloft of their mother's cabin, and they had promised to help fill
the stockings that the girls' sewing class was to make.
Every girl of Tess' acquaintance was going to do something "lovely," and
she wanted to know what _she_ could do?
"Why, Sadie Goronofsky says maybe she'll _buy_ something to hang on the
tree. She is going to have a lot of money saved by Christmas time,"
declared Tess.
"Why, Tess," said Agnes, "isn't Sadie Goronofsky Mrs. Goronofsky's
little girl that lives in one of our tenements on Meadow Street?"
"No. She's _Mister_ Goronofsky's little girl. The lady Mr. Goronofsky
married is only Sadie's step-mother. She told me so."
"But they are very poor people," Ruth said. "I know, for they can
scarcely pay their rent some months. Mr. Howbridge told me so."
"There are a lot of little children in the family," said Agnes.
"And Sadie is the oldest," Tess said. "You see, she told me how it was.
She has to go home nights and wash and dry the dishes, and sweep, and
take care of the baby--and lots of things. She never has any time to
play.
"But on Friday night--that's just like our Saturday night, you know,"
explained Tess, "for they celebrate Saturday as Sunday--they're Jewish
people. Well, on Friday night, Sadie tells me, her step-mother puts a
quarter for her in a big red bank in their kitchen."
"Puts a quarter each week in Sarah's bank?" said Ruth. "Why, that's
fine!"
"Yes. It's because Sadie washes the dishes and takes care of the baby so
nice. And before Christmas the bank is going to be opened. Then Sadie is
going to get something nice for all her little step-brothers and
sisters, and something nice for our tree, too."
"She'll have a lot of money," said Agnes. "Must be they're not so poor
as they make out, Ruth."
"Mr. Goronofsky has a little tailor business, and that's all," Ruth
said, gravely. "I--I sha'n't tell Mr. Howbridge about Sadie and her
bank."
Thanksgiving came and went--and it was a real Thanksgiving for the
Corner House girls. They had never had such a fine time on that national
festival before, although they were all alone--just the regular
family--at the table.
Neale was to have helped eat the plump hen turkey that Mrs. MacCall
roasted, but the very night before Thanksgiving he came to Ruth and
begged off.
"I got to talking with Mr. Murphy this afternoon," said Neale, rather
shamefacedly, "and he said he hadn't eaten a Thanksgiving dinner since
his wife and child drowned in the Johnstown flood--and that was years
and years ago, you know.
"So I asked him if he'd have a good dinner if I stayed and ate it with
him, and the old fellow said he would," Neale continued. "And Mrs. Judy
Roach--the widow woman who does the extra cleaning for him--will come to
cook the dinner.
"He's gone out to buy the turkey--the biggest gobbler he can get, he
told me--for Mrs. Judy has a raft of young ones, 'all av thim wid
appetites like a famine in ould Ireland,' he told me."
"Oh, Neale!" cried Ruth, with tears in her eyes.
"He's a fine old man," declared Neale, "when you get under the skin.
Mrs. Judy Roach and her brood will get a square meal for once in their
lives--believe me."
So Neale stayed at the cobbler's and helped do the honors of that
Thanksgiving dinner. He reported to the Corner House girls later how it
"went off."
"'For phat we are about to resave,' as Father Dooley says--Aloysius, ye
spalpane! ye have an eye open, squintin' at the tur-r-rkey!--'lit us be
trooly thankful,'" observed Mr. Con Murphy, standing up to carve the
huge, brown bird. "Kape your elbows off the table, Aloysius Roach--ye
air too old ter hev such bad manners. What par-r-rt of the bir-r-d will
ye have, Aloysius?"
"A drumstick," announced Aloysius.
"A drumstick it is--polish that now, ye spalpane, and polish it well.
And Alice, me dear, phat will _youse_ hev?" pursued Mr. Murphy.
"I'll take a leg, too, Mr. Murphy," said the oldest Roach girl.
"Quite right. Iv'ry par-r-rt stringthens a par-r-rt--an' 'tis a
spindle-shanks I notice ye air, Alice. And you, Patrick Sarsfield?" to
the next boy.
"Leg," said Patrick Sarsfield, succinctly.
Mr. Murphy dropped the carver and fork, and made a splotch of gravy on
the table.
"_What?_" he shouted. "Hev ye not hear-r-rd two legs already bespoke,
Patrick Sarsfield, an' ye come back at me for another? Phat for kind of
a baste do ye think this is? I'm not carvin' a cinterpede, I'd hev ye
know!"
At last the swarm of hungry Roaches was satisfied, and, according to
Neale's report, the dinner went off very well indeed, save that his
mother feared she would have to grease and roll Patrick Sarsfield before
the fire to keep him from bursting, he ate so much!
It was shortly after Thanksgiving that Milton suffered from its famous
ice-storm. The trees and foliage in general suffered greatly, and the
_Post_ said there would probably be little fruit the next year. For the
young folk of the town it brought great sport.
The Corner House girls awoke on that Friday morning to see everything
out-of-doors a glare of ice. The shade trees on the Parade were borne
down by the weight of the ice that covered even the tiniest twig on
every tree. Each blade of grass was stiff with an armor of ice. And a
scum of it lay upon all the ground.
The big girls put on their skates and dragged Tess and Dot to school.
Almost all the older scholars who attended school that day went on
steel. At recess and after the session the Parade was the scene of races
and impromptu games of hockey.
The girls of the sixth grade, grammar, held races of their own. Trix
Severn was noted for her skating, and heretofore had been champion of
all the girls of her own age, or younger. She was fourteen--nearly two
years older than Agnes Kenway.
But Agnes was a vigorous and graceful skater. She skated with Neale
O'Neil (who at once proved himself as good as any boy on the ice) and
_that_ offended Trix, for she had wished to skate with Neale herself.
Since the green tinge had faded out of Neale's hair, and it had grown to
a respectable length, the girls had all cast approving glances at him.
Oddly enough, his hair had grown out a darker shade than before. It
could not be the effect of the dye, but he certainly was no longer "the
white-haired boy."
Well! Trix was real cross because Agnes Kenway skated with Neale. Then,
when the sixth grade, grammar, girls got up the impromptu races, Trix
found that Agnes was one of her closest competitors.
While the boys played hockey at the upper end of the Parade, the girls
raced 'way to Willow Street and back again. Best two out of three trials
it was, and the first trial was won by Agnes--and she did it easily!
"Why! you've beaten Trix," Eva Larry cried to Agnes. "However did you do
it? She always beats us skating."
"Oh, I broke a strap," announced Trix, quickly. "Come on! we'll try it
again, and I'll show you."
"I believe Agnes can beat you every time, Trix," laughed Eva, lightly.
Trix flew into a passion at this. And of course, all her venom was aimed
at Agnes.
"I'll show that upstart Corner House girl that she sha'n't ride over
_me_," she declared, angrily, as the contestants gathered for the second
trial of speed.
CHAPTER XI
THE SKATING RACE
There were nearly thirty girls who lined up for the second heat. Many
who had tried the first time dropped out, having been distanced so
greatly by the leaders.
"But that is no way to do!" laughed Agnes, ignoring Trix Severn and her
gibes. "It is anybody's race yet. One never knows what may happen in a
free-for-all like this. Trix, or Eva, or I, may turn an ankle----"
"Or break another strap," broke in Eva, laughing openly at Trix.
"Just you wait!" muttered Trix Severn, in a temper.
Now, giving way to one's temper never helps in a contest of strength or
skill. Agnes herself was trying to prove that axiom; but Trix had never
tried to restrain herself.
Ere this Miss Shipman had changed Agnes' seat in the class-room, seeing
plainly that Trix continued her annoying actions; Agnes had striven to
be patient because she loved Miss Shipman and did not want to make
trouble in her grade.
Agnes took her place now as far from Trix as she could get. Ruth, and
another of the older girls were at the line, and one of the high school
boys who owned a stop-watch timed the race.
"Ready!" he shouted. "Set!"
The race was from a dead start. The girls bent forward, their left feet
upon the mark.
"Go!" shouted the starter.
The smoothest stretch of ice was right down the center of the Parade. It
was still so cold that none of the trees had begun to drip. Some
employees of the town Highway Department were trying to knock the ice
off the trees, so as to save the overweighted branches.
But thus far these workmen had kept away from the impromptu race-course.
Down the middle of the park the girls glided toward the clump of spruce
trees, around which they must skate before returning.
Trix, Eva, Myra, Pearl Harrod and Lucy Poole all shot ahead at the
start. Agnes "got off on the wrong foot," as the saying is, and found
herself outdistanced at first.
But she was soon all right. She had a splendid stroke for a girl, and
she possessed pluck and endurance.
She crept steadily up on the leading contestants, passing Eva, Myra, and
Lucy before half the length of the Parade Ground was behind them.
Trix was in the lead and Pearl Harrod was fighting her for first place.
Agnes kept to one side and just before the trio reached the spruce clump
at Willow Street, she shot in, rounded the clump alone, and started up
the course like the wind upon the return trip!
Trix fairly screamed after her, she was so vexed. Trix, too, had
endurance. She left Pearl behind and skated hard after Agnes Kenway.
She never would have caught her, however, had it not been for an odd
accident that happened to the Corner House girl.
As Agnes shot up the course, one of the workmen came with a long pole
with a hook on the end of it, and began to shake the bent branches of a
tree near the skating course. Off rattled a lot of ice, falling to the
hard surface below and breaking into thousands of small bits.
Agnes was in the midst of this rubbish before she knew it. One
skate-runner got entangled in some pieces and down she went--first to
her knees and then full length upon her face!
Some of the other girls shrieked with laughter. But it might have been a
serious accident, Agnes was skating so fast.
Trix saved her breath to taunt her rival later, and, skating around the
bits of ice, won the heat before Agnes, much shaken and bruised, had
climbed to her feet.
"Oh, Aggie! you're not really hurt, are you?" cried Ruth, hurrying to
her sister.
"My goodness! I don't know," gasped Agnes. "I saw stars."
"You have a bump on your forehead," said one girl.
"I feel as though I had them all over me," groaned Agnes.
"I know that will turn black and blue," said Lucy, pointing to the lump
on Agnes' forehead.
"And yellow and green, too," admitted Agnes. Then she giggled and added
in a whisper to Ruth: "It will be as brilliant as Neale's hair was when
he dyed it!"
"Well, you showed us what you could do in the first heat, Aggie," said
Pearl, cheerfully. "I believe that you can easily beat Trix."
"Oh, yes!" snarled the latter girl, who over-heard this. "A poor excuse
for not racing is better than none."
"Well! I declare, Trix, if _you'd_ fallen down," began Eva; but Agnes
interrupted:
"I haven't said I wasn't going to skate the third heat."
"Oh! you can't, Aggie," Ruth said.
"I'd skate it if I'd broken both legs and all my promises!" declared
Agnes, sharply. "That girl isn't going to put it all over me without a
fight!"
"Great!" cried Eva. "Show her."
"I admire your pluck, but not your language, Aggie," said her older
sister. "And if you _can_ show her----"
Agnes did show them all. She had been badly shaken up by her fall, and
her head began to throb painfully, but the color had come back into her
cheeks and she took her place in the line of contestants again with a
bigger determination than ever to win.
She got off on the right foot this time! Only eighteen girls started and
all of them were grimly determined to do their best.
The boys had left off their hockey games and crowded along the starting
line and the upper end of the track, to watch the girls race. People had
come out from their houses to get a closer view of the excitement, and
some of the teachers--including Mr. Marks and the physical
instructors--were in the crowd. The boys began to root for their
favorites, and Agnes heard Neale leading the cheers for her.
Trix Severn was not much of a favorite with the boys; she wasn't "a good
sport." But the second Kenway girl had showed herself to be good fun
right from the start.
"Got it, Agnes! Hurrah for the Corner House girl!" shrieked one
youngster who belonged in the sixth grade, grammar.
"Eva Larry for mine," declared another. "She's some little skater, and
don't you forget it."
Some of the boys started down the track after the flying contestants,
but Ruth darted after them and begged them to keep out of the way so as
not to confuse the racers when they should come back up the Parade
Ground.
Meanwhile Agnes was taking no chances of being left behind this time.
She had gotten off right and was in the lead within the first few yards.
Putting forth all her strength at first, she easily distanced most of
the eighteen. It was, after all, a short race, and she knew that she
must win it "under the whip," if at all.
Her fall would soon stiffen and lame her; Agnes knew that very well.
Ordinarily she would have given in to the pain she felt and owned that
she had been hurt. But Trix's taunts were hard to bear--harder than the
pain in her knee and in her head.
Once she glanced over her shoulder and saw Trix right behind--the
nearest girl to her in the race. The glance inspired her to put on more
steam. She managed to lead the crowd to the foot of the Parade.
She turned the clump of spruce trees on the "long roll" and found a
dozen girls right at her heels as she faced up the Parade again. Trix
was in the midst of them.
There was some confusion, but Agnes kept out of it. She had her wits
very much about her, too; and she saw that Trix cut the spruce clump
altogether--turning just before reaching the place, and so saving many
yards.
In the excitement none of the other racers, save Agnes, noticed this
trick. "Cheat!" thought Agnes. But the very fact that her enemy was
dishonest made Agnes the more determined to beat her.
Agnes' breath was growing short, however; _how_ her head throbbed! And
her right knee felt as though the skin was all abrased and the cap
fairly cracked. Of course, she knew this last could not be true, or she
would not be skating at all; but she was in more pain than she had ever
suffered in her life before without "giving in" to it.
She gritted her teeth and held grimly to her course. Trix suddenly
pulled up even with her. Agnes knew the girl never would have done so
had she not cheated at the bottom of the course.
"I'll win without playing baby, or I won't win at all!" the Corner House
girl promised herself. "If she can win after cheating, let her!"
And it looked at the moment as though Trix had the better chance. She
drew ahead and was evidently putting forth all her strength to keep the
lead.
Right ahead was the spot where the broken ice covered the course. Agnes
bore well away from it; Trix swept out, too, and almost collided with
her antagonist.
"Look where you're going! Don't you dare foul me!" screamed the Severn
girl at Agnes.
That flash of rage cost Trix something. Agnes made no reply--not even
when Trix flung back another taunt, believing that the race was already
won.
But it was not. "I will! _I will!_" thought Agnes, and she stooped lower
and shot up the course passing Trix not three yards from the line, and
winning by only an arm's length.
"I beat her! I beat her!" cried Trix, blinded with tears, and almost
falling to the ice. "Don't you dare say I didn't."
"It doesn't take much courage to say that, Beatrice," said Miss Shipman,
right at her elbow. "We all saw the race. It was fairly won by Agnes."
"It wasn't either! She's a cheat!" gasped the enraged girl, without
realizing that she was speaking to her teacher instead of to another
girl.
This was almost too much for Agnes' self-possession. She was in pain and
almost hysterical herself. She darted forward and demanded:
"Where did _I_ cheat, Miss? You can't say _I_ didn't skate around the
spruce clump down there."
"That's right, Aggie," said the high school girl who had been on watch
with Ruth. "I saw Trix cut that clump, and if she'd gotten in first,
she'd have lost on that foul."
"That's a story!" exclaimed Trix; but she turned pale.
"Say no more about it, girls. The race is won by Agnes--and won
honestly," Miss Georgiana said.
But Trix Severn considered she had been very ill-used by Agnes. She
buried _that_ bone and carefully marked the spot where it lay.
CHAPTER XII
THE CHRISTMAS PARTY
"What do you think Sammy Pinkney said in joggerfry class to-day?"
observed Tess, one evening at the supper table.
"'Geography,' dear. Don't try to shorten your words so," begged Ruth.
"I--I forgot," admitted Tess. "'Ge-og-er-fry!' Is that right?"
"Shucks!" exclaimed Agnes. "Let's have the joke. I bet Sammy Pinkney is
always up to something."
"He likes Tess, Sammy does," piped up Dot, "for he gave her Billy
Bumps."
Tess grew fiery red. "I don't want boys liking me!" she declared. "Only
Neale."
"And especially not Sam Pinkney, eh?" said Agnes. "But what happened?
You have us all worked up, Tess."
"Why, Miss Andrews was telling us that the 'stan' at the end of any word
meant 'the place of'--like Afghanistan, the place the Afghans live----"
"That's what Mrs. Adams is knitting," interposed Dot, placidly.
"_What?_" demanded Agnes. "Why, the Afghans are a people--in Asia--right
near India."
"She's knitting one; she told me so," declared Dot, holding her ground
obstinately. "She knits it out of worsted."
"That's right," laughed Ruth. "It's a crocheted 'throw' for a couch. You
are right, Dot; and so are you, too, Aggie."
"Are we ever going to get to Sammy Pinkney?" groaned Agnes.
"Well!" said Tess, indignantly, "I'll tell you, if you'll give me a
chance."
"Sail right in, sister," chuckled Agnes.
"So Miss Andrews said 'stan' meant 'the place of,'" rushed on Tess,
"like Afghanistan, and Hindoostan, 'the place of the Hindoos,' and she
says:
"'Can any of you give another example of the use of "stan" for the end
of a word?' and Sammy says:
"'I can, Miss Andrews. Umbrellastan--the place of the umbrellars,' and
now Sammy," concluded Tess, "can't have any stocking on our Christmas
tree."
"I guess Sammy was trying to be smart," said Dot, gravely.
"He's a smart boy, all right," Agnes chuckled. "I heard him last Sunday
in Sunday school class. He's in Miss Pepperill's class right behind
ours. Miss Pepperill asked Eddie Collins:
"'What happened to Babylon?'
"'It fell,' replied Ed.
"'And what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah?' she asked Robbie Foote, and
Robbie said:
"'They were destroyed, Miss Pepperill.'
"Then she came to Sammy. 'What of Tyre, Sammy?' she asked.
"'Punctured,' said Sammy, and got the whole class to laughing."
"Oh, now, Aggie!" queried Ruth, doubtfully, "isn't that a joke?"
"No more than Tess's story is a joke," giggled the plump girl.
"But it's no joke for Sammy to lose his part in the Christmas
entertainment," said Tess, seriously. "I'm going to buy him a pair of
wristlets, his wrists are so chapped."
"You keep on planning to buy presents for all the boys that are shut out
of participating in the Christmas tree," laughed Ruth, "and you'll use
up all your spending money, Tess."
Tess was reflective. "Boys are always getting into trouble, aren't
they?" she observed. "It's lucky we haven't any in this family."
"I think so myself, Tess," agreed Ruth.
"Well! Nice boys like Neale," spoke up the loyal Dot, "wouldn't hurt any
family."
"But there aren't many nice ones like Neale," said Tess, with
conviction. "'Most always they seem to be getting into trouble and being
punished. The teachers don't like them much."
"Oh, _our_ teacher does," said Dot, eagerly. "There's Jacob Bloomer. You
know--his father is the German baker on Meadow Street. Our teacher used
to like him a lot."
"And what's the matter with Jakey now?" asked Agnes. "Is he in her bad
books?"
"I don't know would you call it 'bad books,'" Dot said. "But he doesn't
bring the teacher a pretzel any more."
"A pretzel!" exclaimed Ruth.
"What a ridiculous thing to bring," said Agnes.
"She liked them," Dot said, nodding. "But she doesn't eat them any
more."
"Why not?" asked Ruth.
"We--ell, Jacob doesn't bring them."
"Do tell us why not!"
"Why," said Dot, earnestly, "you see teacher told Jacob one day that she
liked them, but she wished his father didn't make them so salty. So
after that Jacob always brought teacher a pretzel without any salt on
it.
"'It's very kind,' teacher told Jacob, 'of your father to make me a
pretzel 'specially every day,' she told him, 'without the salt.' And
Jacob told her his father didn't do any such thing; _he_ licked the salt
off before he gave teacher the pretzel--an' she hasn't never eaten any
since, and Jacob's stopped bringing them," concluded Dot.
"Well! what do you think of that?" gasped Agnes. "I should think your
teacher _would_ lose her taste for pretzels."
"But I don't suppose Jacob understands," said Ruth, smiling.
"Oh, Ruth!" cried Agnes, suddenly. "It's at Mr. Bloomer's where Carrie
Poole's having her big party cake made. Lucy told me so. Lucy is
Carrie's cousin, you know."
"I heard about that party," said Tess. "It's going to be _grand_. Are
you and Aggie going, Ruth?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said the oldest Corner House girl. "I haven't
been invited yet."
"Nor me, either," confessed Agnes. "Don't you suppose we shall be? I
want to go, awfully, Ruthie."
"It's the first really _big_ party that's been gotten up this winter,"
agreed Ruth. "I don't know Carrie Poole very well, though she's in my
class."
"They live in a great big farmhouse on the Buckshot Road," Agnes said.
"Lucy told me. A beautiful place. Lots of the girls in my grade are
going. Trix Severn is very good friends with Carrie Poole, they say.
Why, Ruth! can _that_ be the reason why we haven't been invited?"
"_What's_ the reason?"
"'Cause Trix is good friends with Carrie? Trix's mother is some relation
to Mrs. Poole. That Trix girl is so mean I _know_ she'll just work us
out of any invitation to the party."
Agnes' eyes flashed and it looked as though a storm was coming. But Ruth
remained tranquil.
"There will be other parties," the older girl said. "It won't kill us to
miss this one."
"Speak for yourself!" complained Agnes. "It just kill us with some of
the girls. The Pooles are very select. If we are left out of Carrie's
party, we'll be left out of the best of everything that goes on this
winter."
Ruth would not admit to Agnes just how badly she felt about the fact
that they were seemingly overlooked by Carrie Poole in the distribution
of the latter's favors. The party was to be on the Friday night of the
week immediately preceding Christmas.
There had been no snow of any consequence as yet, but plenty of cold
weather. Milton Pond was safely frozen over and the Corner House girls
were there almost every afternoon. Tess was learning to skate and Ruth
and Agnes took turns drawing Dot about the pond on her sled.
Neale O'Neil had several furnaces to attend to now, and he always looked
after the removal of the ashes to the curbline, and did other dirty
work, immediately after school. But as soon as his work was finished he,
too, hurried to the pond.
Neale was a favorite with the girls--and without putting forth any
special effort on his part to be so. He was of a retiring disposition,
and aside from his acquaintanceship with some of the boys of his grade
and his friendship with the Corner House girls, Neale O'Neil did not
appear to care much for youthful society.
For one thing, Neale felt his position keenly. He was the oldest scholar
in his class. Miss Shipman considered him her brightest pupil, but the
fact remained that he really should have been well advanced in high
school. Ruth Kenway was only a year older than Neale.
His size, his good looks, and his graceful skating, attracted the
attention of the older girls who sought the Milton Pond for recreation.
"There's that Neale O'Neil," said Carrie Poole, to some friends, on this
particular afternoon, when she saw the boy putting on his skates. "Don't
any of you girls know him? I want him at my party."
"He's dreadfully offish," complained Pearl Harrod.
"He seems to be friendly enough with the Corner House girls," said
Carrie. "If they weren't such stuck-up things----"
"Who says they're stuck up?" demanded her cousin Lucy. "I'm sure Aggie
isn't."
"Trix says she is. And I must say Ruth keeps to herself a whole lot.
She's in my class but I scarcely ever speak to her," said Carrie.
"Now you've said something," laughed Eva Larry. "Ruth isn't a girl who
puts herself forward, believe me!"
"They're all four jolly girls," declared Lucy.
"The kids and all."
"Oh! I don't want any kids out to the house Friday night," said Carrie.
"Do you mean to say you haven't asked Aggie and Ruth?" gasped Pearl.
"Not yet."
"Why not?" demanded Lucy, bluntly.
"Why----I don't know them very well," said Carrie, hastily. "But I _do_
want that Neale O'Neil. So few boys know how to act at a party. And I
wager _he_ dances."
"I can tell you right now," said Lucy, "you'll never get him to come
unless the Corner House girls are invited. Why! they're the only girls
of us all who know him right well."
"I am going to try him," said Carrie Poole, with sudden decision.
She skated right over to Neale O'Neil just as he had finished strapping
on the cobbler's old skates that had been lent him. Carrie Poole was a
big girl--nearly seventeen. She was too wise to attack Neale directly
with the request she had to make.
"Mr. O'Neil," she said, with a winning smile, "I saw you doing the
'double-roll' the other day, and you did it so easily! I've been trying
to get it for a long while. Will you show me--please--just a little?"
Even the gruffest boy could scarcely escape from such a net--and Neale
O'Neil was never impolite. He agreed to show her, and did so. Of course
they became more or less friendly within a few minutes.
"It's so kind of you," said Carrie, when she had managed to get the
figure very nicely. "I'm a thousand times obliged. But it wasn't just
this that I wanted to talk with you about."
Neale looked amazed. He was not used to the feminine mind.
"I wanted to pluck up my courage," laughed Carrie, "to ask you to come
to my party Friday evening. Just a lot of the boys and girls, all of
whom you know, I am sure. I'd dearly love to have you come, Mr. O'Neil."
"But--but I don't really know _your_ name," stammered Neale.
"Why! I'm Carrie Poole."
"And I'm sure I don't know where you live," Neale hastened to say. "It's
very kind of you----"
"Then you'll come?" cried Carrie, confidently. "We live out of town--on
the Buckshot Road. Anybody will tell you."
"I suppose the Kenway girls will know," said Neale, doubtfully. "I can
go along with them."
Carrie was a girl who thought quickly. She had really promised Trix
Severn that she would not invite Ruth and Agnes Kenway to her party; but
how could she get out of doing just that under these circumstances?
"Of course," she cried, with apparently perfect frankness. "I sincerely
hope they'll both come. And I can depend upon you to be there, Mr.
O'Neil?"
Then she skated straight away and found Ruth and Agnes and invited them
for Friday night in a most graceful way.
"I wanted to ask you girls personally instead of sending a formal
invite," she said, warmly. "You being new girls, you know. You'll come?
That's so kind of you! I shouldn't feel that the party would be a
success if you Corner House girls were not there."
So that is how they got the invitation; but at the time the Kenway
sisters did not suspect how near they came to not being invited at all
to the Christmas party.
CHAPTER XIII
THE BARN DANCE
Such a "hurly-burly" as there was about the old Corner House on Friday
afternoon! Everybody save Aunt Sarah was on the _qui vive_ over the
Christmas party--for this was the first important social occasion to
which any of the Kenway sisters had been invited since coming to Milton
to live.
Miss Titus, that famous gossip and seamstress, had been called in again,
and the girls all had plenty of up-to-date winter frocks made. Miss
Titus' breezy conversation vastly interested Dot, who often sat silently
nursing her Alice-doll in the sewing room, ogling the seamstress
wonderingly as her tongue ran on. "'N so, you see, he says to her," was
a favorite phrase with Miss Titus.
Mrs. MacCall said the seamstress' tongue was "hung in the middle and ran
at both ends." But Dot's comment was even more to the point. After Miss
Titus had started home after a particularly gossipy day at the old
Corner House, Dot said:
"Ruthie, don't you think Miss Titus seems to know an awful lot of _un-so
news_?"
However, to come to the important Friday of Carrie Poole's party: Ruth
and Agnes were finally dressed. They only _looked_ at their supper. Who
wanted to eat just before going to a real, country barn-dance? That is
what Carrie had promised her school friends.
Ruth and Agnes had their coats and furs on half an hour before Neale
O'Neil came for them. It was not until then that the girls noticed how
really shabby Neale was. His overcoat was thin, and plainly had not been
made for him.
Ruth knew she could not give the proud boy anything of value. He was
making his own way and had refused every offer of assistance they had
made him. He bore his poverty jauntily and held his head so high, and
looked at the world so fearlessly, that it would have taken courage
indeed to have accused him of being in need.
He strutted along beside the girls, his unmittened hands deep in his
pockets. His very cheerfulness denied the cold, and when Ruth timidly
said something about it, Neale said gruffly that "mittens were for
babies!"
It was a lowery evening as the trio of young folk set forth. The clouds
had threatened snow all day, and occasionally a flake--spying out the
land ahead of its vast army of brothers--drifted through the air and
kissed one's cheek.
Ruth, Agnes, and Neale talked of the possible storm, and the coming
Christmas season, and of school, as they hurried along. It was a long
walk out the Buckshot Road until they came in sight of the brilliantly
lighted Poole farmhouse.
It stood at the top of the hill--a famous coasting place--and it looked
almost like a castle, with all its windows alight, and now and then a
flutter of snowflakes falling between the approaching young people and
the lampshine from the doors and windows.
The girls and boys were coming from all directions--some from across the
open, frozen fields, some from crossroads, and other groups, like the
Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil, along the main highway.
Some few came in hacks, or private carriages; but not many. Milton
people were, for the most part, plain folk, and frowned upon any
ostentation.
The Corner House girls and their escort reached the Poole homestead in
good season. The entire lower floor was open to them, save the kitchen,
where Mother Poole and the hired help were busy with the huge supper
that was to be served later.
There was music and singing, and a patheoscope entertainment at first,
while everybody was getting acquainted with everybody else. But the boys
soon escaped to the barn.
The Poole barn was an enormous one. The open floor, with the great mows
on either side, and the forest of rafters overhead, could have
accommodated a full company of the state militia, for its drill and
evolutions.
Under the mows on either hand were the broad stalls for the cattle--the
horses' intelligent heads looking over the mangers at the brilliantly
lighted scene, from one side, while the mild-eyed cows and oxen chewed
their cud on the other side of the barn floor.
All the farm machinery and wagons had been removed, and the open space
thoroughly swept. Rows of Chinese lanterns, carefully stayed so that the
candles should not set them afire, were strung from end to end of the
barn. Overhead the beams of three great lanterns were reflected downward
upon the dancing-floor.
When the boys first began to crowd out to the barn, all the decorating
was not quite finished, and the workmen had left a rope hanging from a
beam above. Some of the boys began swinging on that rope.
"Here's Neale! Here's Neale O'Neil!" cried one of the sixth grade boys
when Neale appeared. "Come on, Neale. Show us what you did on the rope
in the school gym."
Most boys can easily be tempted to "show off" a little when it comes to
gymnastic exercises. Neale seized the rope and began to mount it,
stiff-legged and "hand over hand." It was a feat that a professional
acrobat would have found easy, but that very few but professionals could
have accomplished.
It was when he reached the beam that the boy surprised his mates. He got
his legs over the beam and rested for a moment; then he commenced the
descent.
In some way he wrapped his legs around the rope and, head down, suddenly
shot toward the floor at a fear-exciting pace.
Several of the girls, with Mr. Poole, were just entering the barn. The
girls shrieked, for they thought Neale was falling.
But the boy halted in midflight, swung up his body quickly, seized the
rope again with both hands, and dropped lightly to the floor.
"Bravo!" cried Mr. Poole, leading the applause. "I declare, that was
well done. I saw a boy at Twomley & Sorber's Circus this last summer do
that very thing--and he did it no better."
"Oh, but that couldn't have been Neale, Mr. Poole," Agnes Kenway
hastened to say, "for Neale tells us that he never went to a circus in
his life."
"He might easily be the junior member of an acrobatic troupe, just the
same," said Mr. Poole; but Neale had slipped away from them for the time
being and the farmer got no chance to interview the boy.
A large-sized talking machine was wheeled into place and the farmer put
in the dance records himself. The simple dances--such as they had
learned at school or in the juvenile dancing classes--brought even the
most bashful boys out upon the floor. There were no wallflowers, for
Carrie was a good hostess and, after all, had picked her company with
some judgment.
The girls began dancing with their furs and coats on; but soon they
threw their wraps aside, for the barn floor seemed as warm as any
ballroom.
They had lots of fun in the "grand march," and with a magic-lantern one
of the boys flashed vari-colored lights upon the crowd from the
loft-ladder at the end of the barn.
Suddenly Mr. Poole put a band record in the machine, and as the march
struck up, the great doors facing the house were rolled back. They had
been dancing for more than two hours. It was after ten o 'clock.
"Oh!" shouted the girls.
"Ah!" cried the boys.
The snow was now drifting steadily down, and between the illumination by
the colored slides in the lantern, and that from the blazing windows of
the big house, it was indeed a scene to suggest fairyland!
"Into the house--all of you!" shouted Mr. Poole. "Boys, assist your
partners through the snow."
"Come on! Come on!" shouted Carrie, in the lead with Neale O'Neil.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
"Charge for the _eats_, they said!" added Agnes. "Oh--ow--ouch! over my
shoe in the snow."
"And it's we-e-e-et!" wailed another of the girls. "Right down my neck!"
"'Be-you-ti-ful snow! He may sing whom it suits--
I object to the stuff 'cause it soaks through my boots!'"
quoted Agnes. "Hurry up, you ahead!"
So the march was rather ragged--more in the nature of a raid, indeed.
But they had to halt at the side door where the two maids stood armed
with brooms, for Mrs. Poole did not propose that the crowd should bring
in several bushels of snow on their feet.
In the dining and sitting-rooms were long tables, and all loaded with
good things. There were no seats, but plenty of standing room about the
tables. Everybody helped everybody else, and there was a lot of fun.
Some of the girls began to be troubled by the storm. They made frequent
trips to the windows to look out of doors. Soon wraps appeared and the
girls began to say good-night to their young hostess.
"I don't see how we're ever going to get home!" cried one of the girls
who lived at the greatest distance.
Farmer Poole had thought of that. He had routed out his men again, and
they harnessed the horses to a big pung and to two smaller sleighs.
Into these vehicles piled both boys and girls who lived on the other
side of Milton. A few private equipages arrived for some of the young
folk. The fathers of some had tramped through the snow to the farmhouse
to make sure that their daughters were properly escorted home in the
fast quickening storm.
To look out of doors, it seemed a perfect wall of falling snow that the
lamplight streamed out upon. Fortunately it was not very cold, nor did
the wind blow. But at the corner of the house there was a drift as deep
as Neale O'Neil's knees.
"But we'll pull through all right, girls, if you want to try it," he
assured Ruth and Agnes.
They did not like to wait until the sledges got back; that might not be
for an hour. And even then the vehicles would be overcrowded. "Come on!"
said Agnes. "Let's risk it, Ruth."
"I don't know but that we'd better----"
"Pshaw! Neale will get us through. He knows a shortcut--so he says."
"Of course we can trust Neale," said the older Corner House girl,
smiling, and she made no further objection.
They had already bidden their hostess and her father and mother
good-night. So when the trio set off toward town nobody saw them start.
They took the lane beside the barn and went right down the hill, between
the stone fences, now more than half hidden by the snow.
When they got upon the flats, and the lights of the house were hidden,
it did seem as though they were in a great, white desert.
"Who told you this was a short way to town?" demanded Agnes, of Neale.
"Why, one of the girls told me," Neale said, innocently enough. "You
know--that Severn girl."
"What! Trix Severn?" shrieked Agnes.
"Yes."
"I believe she started you off this way, just for the sake of getting us
all into trouble," cried Agnes. "Let's go back!"
But they were now some distance out upon the flats. Far, far ahead there
were faint lights, denoting the situation of Milton; but behind them all
the lights on the hill had been quenched. The Pooles had extinguished
the lamps at the back of the house, and of course ere this the great
barn itself was shrouded in darkness.
The snow came thicker and faster. They were in the midst of a world of
white and had there been any shelter at all at hand, Neale would have
insisted upon taking advantage of it. But there was nothing of the kind.
CHAPTER XIV
UNCLE RUFUS' STORY OF THE CHRISTMAS GOOSE
"Trix is going to stay all night with Carrie. If we go back she will
only laugh at us," Ruth Kenway said, decidedly.
"We-ell," sighed Agnes. "I don't want to give that mean thing a chance
to laugh. We can't really get lost out here, can we, Neale?"
"I don't see how we can," said Neale, slowly. "I'm game to go ahead if
you girls are."
"It looks to me just as bad to go back," Ruth observed.
"Come on!" cried Agnes, and started forward again through the snow.
And, really, they might just as well keep on as to go back. They must be
half way to the edge of Milton by this time, all three were sure.
The "swish, swish, swish" of the slanting snow was all they heard save
their own voices. The falling particles deadened all sound, and they
might have been alone in a wilderness as far as the presence of other
human beings was made known to them.
"Say!" grumbled Neale, "she said there was a brook here somewhere--at
the bottom of a hollow."
"Well, we've been going down hill for some time," Ruth remarked. "It
must be near by now."
"Is--isn't there a--a bridge over it?" quavered Agnes.
"A culvert that we can walk over," said Neale. "Let me go ahead. Don't
you girls come too close behind me."
"But, goodness, Neale!" cried Agnes. "We mustn't lose sight of you."
"I'm not going to run away from you."
"But you're the last boy on earth--as far as we can see," chuckled
Agnes. "You have suddenly become very precious."
Neale grinned. "Get you once to the old Corner House and neither of you
would care if you didn't ever see a boy again," he said.
He had not gone on five yards when the girls, a few paces behind, heard
him suddenly shout. Then followed a great splashing and floundering
about.
"Oh! oh! Neale!" shrieked Agnes. "Have you gone under?"
"No! But I've gone through," growled the boy. "I've busted through a
thin piece of ice. Here's the brook all right; you girls stay where you
are. I can see the culvert."
He came back to them, sopping wet to his knees. In a few moments the
lower part of his limbs and his feet were encased in ice.
"You'll get your death of cold, Neale," cried Ruth, worriedly.
"No, I won't, Ruth. Not if I keep moving. And that's what we'd all
better do. Come on," the boy said. "I know the way after we cross this
brook. There is an unfinished street leads right into town. Comes out
there by your store building--where those Italian kids live."
"Oh! If Mrs. Kranz should be up," gasped Agnes, "she'd take us in and
let you dry your feet, Neale."
"We'll get her up," declared Ruth. "She's as good-hearted as she can be,
and she won't mind."
"But it's midnight," chattered Neale, beginning to feel the chill.
They hurried over the culvert and along the rough street. Far ahead
there was an arc light burning on the corner of Meadow Street. But not a
soul was astir in the neighborhood as the trio came nearer to the German
woman's grocery store, and the corner where Joe Maroni, the father of
Maria, had his vegetable and fruit stand.
The Italians were all abed in their miserable quarters below the street
level; but there was a lamp alight behind the shade of Mrs. Kranz's
sitting room. Agnes struggled ahead through the drifts and the falling
snow, and tapped at the window.
There were startled voices at once behind the blind. The window had a
number of iron bars before it and was supposed to be burglar-proof.
Agnes tapped again, and then the shade moved slightly.
"Go avay! Dere iss noddings for you here yedt!" exclaimed Mrs. Kranz,
threateningly. "Go avay, or I vill de berlice call."
They saw her silhouette on the blind. But there was another shadow, too,
and when this passed directly between the lamp and the window, the girls
saw that it was Maria Maroni. Maria often helped Mrs. Kranz about the
house, and sometimes remained with her all night.
"Oh, Maria! Maria Maroni!" shrieked Agnes, knocking on the pane again.
"Let us in--_do_!"
The Italian girl flew to the window and ran up the shade, despite the
expostulations of Mrs. Kranz, who believed that the party outside were
troublesome young folk of the neighborhood.
But when she knew who they were--and Maria identified them
immediately--the good lady lumbered to the side door of the store
herself, and opened it wide to welcome Ruth and Agnes, with their boy
friend.
"Coom in! Coom in by mine fire," she cried. "Ach! der poor kinder oudt
in dis vedder yedt. Idt iss your deaths mit cold you vould catch--no?"
Ruth explained to the big-hearted German widow how they came to be
struggling in the storm at such an hour.
"Undt dot boy iss vet? Ach! Ledt him his feet dake off qvick! Maria!
make de chocolate hot. Undt de poy--ach! I haf somedings py mine closet
in, for _him_."
She bustled away to reappear in a moment with a tiny glass of something
that almost strangled Neale when he drank it, but, as he had to admit,
"it warmed 'way down to the ends of his toes!"
"Oh, this is _fine_!" Agnes declared, ten minutes later, when she was
sipping her hot chocolate. "I _love_ the snow--and this was almost like
getting lost in a blizzard."
Mrs. Kranz shook her head. "Say nodt so--say nodt so," she rumbled. "Dis
iss pad yedt for de poor folk. Yah! idt vill make de coal go oop in
brice."
"Yes," said Maria, softly. "My papa says he will have to charge twelve
cents a pail for coal to-morrow, instead of ten. He has to pay more."
"I never thought of _that_ side of it," confessed Agnes, slowly. "I
suppose a snow storm like this _will_ make it hard for poor people."
"Undt dere iss blenty poor folk all about us," said Mrs. Kranz, shaking
her head. "Lucky you are, dot you know noddings about idt."
"Why shouldn't we know something about it?" demanded Ruth, quickly. "Do
you mean there will be much suffering among _our_ tenants because of
this storm, Mrs. Kranz?"
"Gott sie dank! nodt for _me_," said the large lady, shaking her head.
"Undt not for Maria's fadder. Joe Maroni iss doin' vell. But many are
nodt so--no. Undt der kinder----"
"Let's give them all a Christmas," exclaimed Ruth, having a sudden
bright, as well as kind, thought. "I'll ask Mr. Howbridge. You shall
tell us of those most in need, Mrs. Kranz--you and Maria."
"Vell dem poor Goronofskys iss de vorst," declared the grocery-store
woman, shaking her head.
Ruth and Agnes remembered the reported riches in Sadie Goronofsky's
bank, but although they looked at each other, they said nothing about
it.
"Sadie has an awful hard time," said Maria.
"De sthep-mudder does nodt treat her very kindly----Oh, I know! She has
so many kinder of her own. Sadie vork all de time ven she iss de school
oudt."
They discussed the other needy neighbors for half an hour longer. Then
Neale put on his dried shoes and stockings, tied his trouser-legs around
his ankles, and announced himself ready to go. The girls were well
protected to their knees by leggings, so they refused to remain for the
night at Mrs. Kranz's home.
They set out bravely to finish their journey to the old Corner House.
Some of the drifts were waist deep and the wind had begun to blow. "My!
but I'm glad we're not over on those flats now," said Agnes.
It was almost one o'clock when they struggled through the last drift and
reached the back door of the old Corner House. Uncle Rufus, his feet on
the stove-hearth, was sleeping in his old armchair, waiting up for them.
"Oh, Uncle Rufus! you ought to be abed," cried Ruth.
"You've lost your beauty sleep, Uncle Rufus," added Agnes.
"Sho', chillen, dis ain't nottin' fo' ol' Unc' Rufus. He sit up many a
night afore dis. An' somebody has ter watch de Christmas goose."
"Oh! The Christmas goose?" cried Agnes. "Has it come?"
"You wanter see him, chillen?" asked the old colored man, shuffling to
the door. "Looker yere."
They followed him to the woodshed door. There, roosting on one leg and
blinking at them in the lamplight, was a huge gray goose. It hissed
softly at them, objecting to their presence, and they went back into the
warm kitchen.
"Why does it stand that way--on one leg--Uncle Rufus?" asked Agnes.
"Perhaps it's resting the other foot," Ruth said, laughing.
"Maybe it has only one leg," Neale observed.
At that Uncle Rufus began chuckling enormously to himself. His eyes
rolled, and his cheeks "blew out," and he showed himself to be very
"tickled."
The door latch clicked and here appeared Tess and Dot in their warm
robes and slippers. They had managed to wake up when the big girls and
Neale came in, and had now stolen down to hear about the party.
Mrs. MacCall had left a nice little lunch, and a pot of cocoa to warm
them up. The girls gathered their chairs in a half circle about the
front of the kitchen range, with Neale, and while Uncle Rufus got the
refreshments ready, Ruth and Agnes told their sisters something about
the barn dance.
But Neale had his eye on the old colored man. "What's the matter,
Uncle?" he asked. "What's amusing you so much?"
"I done been t'inkin' ob 'way back dar befo' de wah--yas-sir. I done
been t'inkin' ob das Christmas goose--he! he! he! das de funniest
t'ing----"
"Oh, tell us about it, Uncle Rufus!" cried Ruth.
"Do tell us," added Agnes, "for we're not a bit sleepy yet."
"Make room for Uncle Rufus' armchair," commanded Ruth. "Come, Uncle
Rufus: we're ready."
Nothing loath the old fellow settled into his creaking chair and looked
into the glowing coals behind the grated fire-box door.
"Disher happen' befo' de wah," he said, slowly. "I warn't mo' dan a
pickerninny--jes' knee-high to a mus'rat, as yo' might say. But I kin
member ol' Mars' Colby's plantation de bery yeah befo' de wah.
"Well, chillen, as I was sayin', disher Christmas I kin 'member lak' it
was yestidy. My ol' mammy was de sho' 'nuff cook at de big house, an'
Mars' Colby t'ought a heap ob her. But she done tuk down wid de mis'ry
in her back jes' two days fore Christmas--an' de big house full ob
comp'ny!
"Sech a gwine 'bout yuh nebber _did_ see, w'en mammy say she couldn't
cook de w'ite folkses' dinner. Dere was a no-'count yaller gal, Sally
Alley dey call her, wot he'ped erbout de breakfas' an' sech; but she
warn't a sho' 'nuff cook--naw'm!
"She 'lowed she was. She was de beatenes' gal for t'inkin' she knowed
eberyt'ing. But, glo-_ree_! dar wasn't nobody on dat plantation wot
could cook er goose tuh suit Mars' Colby lak' my ol' mammy.
"And de goose dey'd picked out fo' dat Christmas dinner sho' was a noble
bird--ya-as'm! Dere was an army ob geese aroun' de pond, but de one
dey'd shet up fo' two weeks, an' fed soft fodder to wid er spoon, was de
noblest ob de ban'," said Uncle Rufus, unctuously.
"Well, dar warn't time tuh send on to Richmon' fo' a sho' 'nuff cook,
an' de dinnah pahty was gaddered togedder. So Mars' Colby had ter let
dat uppity yaller gal go ahead an' do her worstest.
"She sho' done it," said Uncle Rufus, shaking his head. "Dar nebber was
sech anudder dinner sarbed on de Colby table befo' dat time, nor, since.
"My mammy, a-layin' on her back in de quahtahs, an' groanin', sent me up
to de big house kitchen tuh watch. I was big 'nuff to he'p mammy, and it
was in dat kitchen I begin ter l'arn ter be a house sarbent.
"Well, chillen, I kep' my two eyes open, an' I sabed de sauce from
burnin', an' de roun' 'taters from bilin' over, an' de onions from
sco'chin' an' de sweet-er-taters f'om bein' charcoal on one side an'
baked raw on de odder. Glo-_ree_! dat was one 'citin' day in dat
kitchen.
"But I couldn't sabe de goose from bein' sp'ilt. Dat was beyon' my
powah. An' it happen disher way:
"De yaller gal git de goose all stuffed an' fixed propah, fo' she done
use my mammy's resate fo' stuffin'. But de no-'count critter set it
right down in de roastin' pan on de flo' by de po'ch door. Eroun' come
snuffin' a lean houn' dawg, one ob de re'l ol' 'nebber-git enuff' breed.
He's empty as er holler stump--er, he! he! he!" chuckled Uncle Rufus.
"Glo-_ree_! dar allus was a slather of sech houn's aroun' dat
plantation, fo' Mars' Colby was a fox huntah.
"Dat dawg git his eye on dat goose for jes' a secon'--an' de nex' secon'
he grab hit by de laig!
"Lawsy me! My soul an' body!" chortled Uncle Rufus, rocking himself to
and fro in his chair in an ecstasy of enjoyment. "How dem niggers did
squeal! Dar was more'n 'nuff boys an' gals 'roun' undah foot at dat
time, but none ob dem git near de fracas but Unc' Rufus--naw'm!"
"My goodness! the dog didn't get away with the goose, did he, Uncle
Rufus?" asked Ruth.
"I's a-comin' tuh dat--I's a-comin' tuh dat," repeated the old man. "I
seen de goose gwine out de do', an' I grab hit--I sho' did! I grab it by
de two wingses, an' I hang on liker chigger. De odder pickaninnies jes'
a jumpin' eroun' an er-hollerin'. But Unc' Rufus knowed better'n _dat_.
"Dat houn' dawg, he pull, an' I pull, an' it sho' a wondah we didn' pull
dat bird all apaht betwixt us. But erbout de secon' wrench dat hongry
beast gib, he pull de laig clean off'n dat ol' goose!
"Glo-_ree_!" chuckled Uncle Rufus, rolling his eyes and weaving back and
forth on his chair, in full enjoyment of his own story. "Glo-_ree_! Dat
is a 'casion I ain't nebber lak'ly tuh fo'git. Dar I was on my back on
de kitchen flo', wid de goose on top ob me, w'ile de houn'-dawg beat it
erway from dar er mile-er-minit--ya-as'm!
"Dat yaller gal jerked dat goose out'n my arms an' put hit back in de
pan, an clapped de pan inter de oven. 'Wedder hit's got one laig, or
two,' says she, 'dat's de onliest one de w'ite folkses has got fo' dey's
dinner."
"An dat was true 'nuff--true 'nuff," said Uncle Rufus. "But I begin tuh
wondah wot Mars' Colby say 'bout dat los' laig? He was right quick wid
hes temper, an' w'en hes mad was up----Glo-_ree_! he made de quahtahs
_hot_! I wondah wot he do to dat yaller gal w'en dat raggedty goose come
on de table.
"It done got cooked to a tu'n--ya-as! I nebber see a browner, nor a
plumper goose. An' w'en dat Sally Alley done lay him on hes side, wid de
los' laig _down_, hit was jes' a pitcher--jes' a pitcher!" declared
Uncle Rufus, reminiscent yet of the long past feast-day.
"Wal, dar warn't ne'der ob de waitresses willin' tuh tak' dat goose in
an' put it down befo' Mars' Colby--naw'm! So dat yaller gal had to put
on a clean han'kercher an' ap'on, an' do it her own se'f. I was jes'
leetle 'nuff so I crope th'u de do' an' hides behin' de co'nah ob de
sidebo'd.
"I was moughty cur'ous," confessed Uncle Rufus. "I wanted tuh know jes'
wot Mars' Colby say w'en he fin' dat goose ain' got but one laig on
him."
"And what did he say, Uncle Rufus?" asked Agnes, breathless with
interest like the other listeners.
"Das is wot I is a-comin' to. You be patient, chile," chuckled Uncle
Rufus.
"Dar was de long table, all set wid shinin' silber, an' glistenin' cut
glass, an' de be-you-ti-ful ol' crockery dat Madam Colby--das Mars'
Colby's gre't-gran-mammy--brought f'om Englan'. Dar was ten plates
beside de famb'ly.
"De waitresses am busy, a-flyin' eroun' wid de side dishes, an' Mis'
Colby, she serbs at her side ob de table, w'en Mars' Colby, he get up
tuh carve.
"'Wot paht ob de goose is yo' mos' fon' of, Miss Lee?' he say to de
young lady on hes right han', monst'ous perlite lak.
"'I'd lak' a slice ob de laig, Cunnel,' she say; 't'ank yo'.'"
Uncle Rufus was surely enjoying himself. He was imitating "the quality"
with great gusto. His eyes rolled, his sides shook, and his brown face
was all one huge smile.
"De bery nex' lady he ax dat same question to, mak' de same reply," went
on Uncle Rufus, "an' Mars' Colby done cut all de laig meat erway on dat
side. Den it come ergin. Somebody else want er piece ob de secon' j'int.
"Mars' Colby stick his fo'k in de goose an' heave him over in de
plattah. Glo-_ree_! dar de under side ob dat goose were all nice an'
brown; but dar warn't no sign ob a laig erpon hit!
"'Wha' dis? Wha' dis?' Mars' Colby cry. 'Who been a-tamperin' wid dis
goose? Sen' dat no-'count Sally Alley in yeah dis minute!' he say to one
ob de waitresses.
"Glo-_ree_! how scar't we all was. My knees shak' tergedder, an' I bit
my tongue tryin' ter hol' my jaws shet. W'en Mars' Colby done let
loose----well!" and Uncle Rufus sighed.
"Den dey come back wid Sally Alley. If eber dar was a scar't nigger on
dat plantation, it was dat same yaller gal. An' she warn't saddle color
no mo'; she was grayer in de face dan an ol' rat.
"Dey stan' her up befo' Mars' Colby, an' hes eyes look lak' dey was
red--ya-as'm! 'Sally Alley,' he roar at her, 'whar de odder laig ob dis
goose?'
"Sally Alley shake like a willer by de ribber, an' she blurt out: 'Mars'
Colby! sho' 'nuff dar warn't no odder laig _on_ dat goose.'
"'Wha' dat?' say he, moughty savage. 'On'y _one_ laig on dis goose?'
"'Ya-as, suh--sho' 'nuff. Das de onliest laig it had,' says she.
"'What do yo' mean?' Mars' Colby cry. 'Yo' tell me my goose ain' hab but
one laig?'
"'Ya-as, suh. Das hit. On'y one laig,' says dat scar't yaller gal, an'
ter clinch it she added, '_All_ yo' geese dat a-ways, Mars' Colby. Dey
all ain' got but one laig.'"
"Oh!" squealed Dot.
"Was it sure enough _so_, Uncle Rufus?" asked Tess, in awe.
"Yo' wait! yo' wait, chillen! I'se gittin' tuh dat," declared the old
man, chuckling. "Co'se dat Sally Alley say dat, hysterical lak'. She was
dat scar't. Mars' Colby scowl at her mo' awful.
"'I mak' yo' prove dat to me atter dinner,' he say, savage as he kin be.
'Yo'll tak' us all out dar an' show us my one-laiged geese. An' if it
_ain't_ so, I'll send yo' to de fiel' oberseer.'
"De fiel' oberseer do de whippin' on dat plantation," whispered Uncle
Rufus, "an' Sally Alley knowed wot dat meant."
"Oh, dear me!" cried tender-hearted Tess. "They didn't re'lly _beat_
her?"
"Don't try to get ahead of the story, Tess," said Agnes, but rather
shakingly. "We'll all hear it together."
"Das it," said Uncle Rufus. "Jes' gib Unc' Rufus time an' he'll tell it
all. Dat yaller gal sho' was in a fix. She don' know w'ich way to tu'n.
"Das dinner was a-gettin' nearer an' nearer to de en'. Mars' Colby do
lak' he say den. He come out an' mak' Sally Alley show de one-laiged
geese.
"'I has a po'erful min',' dat Sally gal say, 'ter go down dar an' chop
er laig off'n ebery goose in de yard.'
"But she didn't hab no min' to do dat," pursued Uncle Rufus. "Naw'm. She
didn't hab no min' for nottin', she was dat flabbergastuated.
"She t'ink she run erway; but she wouldn't git far befo' Mars' Colby be
atter her wid de houn's. Dar ain't no place to run to, an' she ain't got
no mammy, so she run tuh mine," said Uncle Rufus, shaking his head. "An'
my mammy was a wise ol' woman. She done been bawn in de Colby famb'ly,
an' she know Mars' Colby better dan he know he'self. Fiery as he was,
she know dat if yo' kin mak' him laff, he'd fo'give a nigger 'most
anyt'ing.
"So my ol' mammy tol' Sally Alley wot tuh say an' do. Sally wipe her
eyes an' mak' herse'f neat erg'in, an' wa'k up ter de big house brave as
a lion--in de seemin'--jes' as de gran' folkses comes out upon de lawn.
"'Here, yo',' 'sclaim Mars' Colby, we'n he see her. 'Yo' come an' show
me all dem one-laiged geese.'
"'Ya-as, Mars',' says Sally Alley, an' she haid right off fo' de goose
pon'. Dar was de whole flock roostin' erlong de aidge ob de pon'--an'
all wid one foot drawed up in deir fedders lak' dat goose roostin' out
dar in dat woodshed dis bressed minute!
"'Wot I tell yo'? Wot I tell yo', Mars' Colby?' cry Sally Alley. 'Ain't
all dem gooses got one laig lak' I tol' yo'?'
"But Mars' stride right ober to de fence an' clap hes han's. Ebery one
o' dem geese puts down hes foot an' tu'ns to look at him.
"'Das ain' no fair! das ain' no fair, Mars' Colby!' squeals dat yaller
gal, all 'cited up. '_Yo' didn't clap yo' han's at dat goose on de
table!_'--er, he! he! he!" And so Uncle Rufus finished the story of the
Christmas goose.
Ruth started the younger ones to bed immediately; but Tess called down
from the stair:
"Uncle Rufus! He _didn't_ make her go see the field overseer, did he?"
"Sho'ly not, chile. Dat wasn' Cunnel Mark Colby's way. My ol' mammy
knowed wot would han'le him. He done give one big laff, an' sent Sally
Alley off to Aunt Jinny, de housekeeper, tuh cut her off a new kaliker
dress pattern. But dem quality folkses sho' was tickled erbout dat
one-laiged goose."
CHAPTER XV
SADIE GORONOFSKY'S BANK
When Ruth Kenway had an idea--a real _good_ idea--it usually bore fruit.
She had evolved one of her very best that snowy night while she and
Agnes and Neale O'Neil were drinking hot chocolate in Mrs. Kranz's
parlor.
It was impossible for Ruth to get downtown on Saturday. One reason was,
they all got up late, having crept into bed at half-past four. Then,
there were the usual household tasks, for all four of the Corner House
girls had their established duties on Saturday.
The streets were so full of snow that it would have been almost
impossible for Ruth to have gotten to Mr. Howbridge's office then; but
she went there Monday afternoon.
Mr. Howbridge had been Uncle Peter Stower's lawyer, and it was he who
had brought the news to the four Kenway girls when they lived in
Bloomingsburg, that they were actually rich.
He was a tall, gray gentleman, with sharp eyes and a beaklike nose, and
he looked wonderfully stern and implacable unless he smiled. But he
always had a smile for Ruth Kenway.
The lawyer had acquired a very deep respect for Ruth's good sense and
for her character in general. As he said, there were so many narrow,
stingy souls in the world, it was refreshing to meet a generous nature
like that of the oldest Corner House girl.
"And what is it now, Miss Ruth?" asked the gentleman when she entered
his private office, and shaking hands with her. "Have you come to
consult me professionally, or am I honored by a social call?"
"You are almost the best man who ever lived, Mr. Howbridge," laughed
Ruth. "I _know_ you are the best guardian, for you let me do mostly just
as I please. So I am confident you are going to grant _this_
request----"
Mr. Howbridge groaned. "You are beginning in your usual way, I see," he
said. "You want something of me--but it is for somebody else you want
it, I'll be bound."
"Oh, no, sir! it is really for me," declared Ruth. "I'd like quite some
money."
"What for, may I ask?"
"Of course, sir. I've come to consult you about it. You see, it's the
tenants."
"Those Meadow Street people!" exclaimed the lawyer. "Your Uncle Peter
made money out of them; and his father did before him. But my books will
show little profit from those houses at the end of this year--of that I
am sure."
"But, if we have made so much out of the houses in the past, shouldn't
we spend some of the profit on the tenants _now_?" asked Ruth earnestly.
"You are the most practical _im_practical person I ever met," declared
Mr. Howbridge, laughing rather ruefully.
Ruth did not just understand that; but she was much in earnest and she
put before the lawyer the circumstances of some of the tenants of the
old houses on Meadow Street, as she had heard them from Mrs. Kranz and
Maria Maroni.
She did not forget the Goronofskys, despite Tess' story of Sadie's bank
in which she was saving her Christmas money; but she did not mention
this last to the lawyer.
Ruth wanted of the lawyer details of all the families on the estate's
books. She wished to know the earning capacity of each family, how they
lived, the number of children in each, and their ages and sex.
"You see, Mr. Howbridge, a part of our living--and it is a good
living--comes from these people. We girls should know more about them.
And I am anxious to do something for them this Christmas--especially for
the little children."
"Well, I suppose I shall give in to you; but my better judgment cries
out against it, Miss Ruth," declared the lawyer. "You see Perkins--my
clerk. He collects the rents and knows all the tenants. I believe he
knows when each man gets paid, how much he gets, and all about it. And,
of course, as you say, you'll want some money."
"Yes, sir. This is for all of us--all four of us Corner House girls.
Agnes, and Tess, and Dot, are just as anxious to help these people as I
am. I am sure, Mr. Howbridge, whatever else you may do with money of the
estate, _this_ expense will never be questioned by any of us."
From Mrs. Kranz and Perkins, Ruth obtained the information that she
wished. The Corner House girls knew they could do no great thing; but
for the purchase of small presents that children would appreciate, the
twenty-five dollars Ruth got from Mr. Perkins, would go a long way.
And what fun the Corner House girls had doing that shopping! Tess and
Dot did their part, and that the entire five and ten cent store was not
bought out was not _their_ fault.
"You can get such a lot for your money in that store," Dot gravely
announced, "that a dollar seems twice as big as it does anywhere else."
"But I don't want the other girls to think we are just 'ten-centers,'"
Agnes said. "Trix Severn says she wouldn't be seen going into such a
cheap place."
"What do you care what people call you?" asked Ruth. "If you had been
born in Indiana they'd have called you a 'Hoosier'; and if in North
Carolina, they'd call you a 'Tar Heel.'"
"Or, if you were from Michigan, they'd say you were a 'Michigander,'"
chuckled Neale, who was with them. "In _your_ case, Aggie, it would be
'Michigoose.'"
"Is that so?" demanded Agnes, to whom Neale had once confessed that he
was born in the state of Maine. "Then I suppose we ought to call _you_ a
'Maniac,' eh?"
"Hit! a palpable hit!" agreed Neale, good-naturedly. "Come on! let's
have some of your bundles. For goodness' sake! why didn't you girls
bring a bushel basket--or engage a pack-mule?"
"We seem to have secured a very good substitute for the latter," said
Ruth, demurely.
All this shopping was done early in Christmas week, for the Corner House
girls determined to allow nothing to break into their own home Christmas
Eve celebration. The tree in Tess' room at school was going to be
lighted up on Thursday afternoon; but Wednesday the Kenway girls were
all excused from school early and Neale drove them over to Meadow Street
in a hired sleigh.
They stopped before the doors of the respective shops of Mrs. Kranz and
Joe Maroni. Joe's stand was strung with gay paper flowers and greens. He
had a small forest of Christmas trees he was selling, just at the
corner.
"Good-a day! good-a day, leetla padrona!" was his welcome for Ruth, and
he bowed very low before the oldest Kenway girl, whom he insisted upon
considering the real mistress of the house in which he and his family
lived.
The little remembrances the girls had brought for Joe's family--down to
a rattle for the baby--delighted the Italian. Tess had hung a special
present for Maria on the school tree; but that was a secret as yet.
They carried all the presents into Mrs. Kranz's parlor and then Neale
drove away, leaving the four Corner House girls to play their parts of
_Lady Bountiful_ without his aid.
They had just sallied forth for their first visit when, out of the
Stower tenement in which the Goronofskys lived, boiled a crowd of
shrieking, excited children. Sadie Goronofsky was at their head and a
man in a blue suit and the lettered cap of a gas collector seemed the
rallying point of the entire savage little gang.
"Oh! what is the matter, Sadie?" cried Tess, running to the little
Jewish girl's side.
"He's a thief! he's a gonnif! he's a thief!" shrieked Sadie, dragging at
the man's coat. "He stole mine money. He's busted open mine bank and
stoled all mine money!"
"That red bank in the kitchen?" asked Tess, wonderingly. "That one your
mother put the quarter in every week for you?"
"Sure!" replied the excited Sadie. "My mother's out. I'm alone with the
kids. In this man comes and robs mine bank----"
"What _is_ the trouble?" asked Ruth of the man.
"Why, bless you, somebody's been fooling the kid," he said, with some
compassion. "And it was a mean trick. They told her the quarter-meter
was a bank and that all the money that was put in it should be hers.
"She's a good little kid, too. I've often seen her taking care of her
brothers and sisters and doing the work. The meter had to be opened
to-day and the money taken out--and she caught me at it."
Afterward Agnes said to Ruth: "I could have _hugged_ that man,
Ruthie--for he didn't laugh!"
CHAPTER XVI
A QUARTETTE OF LADY BOUNTIFULS
For once the stolid little Sadie was unfaithful to her charges. She
forgot the little ones her step-mother had left in her care; but the
neighbors looked out for them.
She stood upon the icy walk, when she understood the full truth about
"the big red bank in the kitchen," and watched with tearless eyes the
gas collector walk away.
Her face worked pitifully; her black eyes grew hot; but she would not
let the tears fall. She clenched her little red hands, bit her lower
lip, and stamped her worn shoe upon the walk. Hatred of all mankind--not
alone of the woman who had so wickedly befooled her--was welling up in
little Sadie Goronofsky's heart.
It was then that Ruth Kenway put her arm around the little Jewish girl's
shoulders and led her away to Mrs. Kranz's back parlor. There the Corner
House girls told her how sorry they were; Mrs. Kranz filled her hands
with "coffee kringle." Then some of the very best of the presents the
Corner House girls had brought were chosen for Sadie's brothers and
sisters, and Sadie was to be allowed to take them home herself to them.
"I don't mind being guyed by the kids at school because I can't put
nothin' on that old Christmas tree. But I been promisin' _her_ kids they
should each have suthin' fine. She's been foolin' them jest the same as
she has me. I don't know what my papa ever wanted ter go and marry _her_
for," concluded Sadie, with a sniff.
"Hey! hey!" exclaimed Mrs. Kranz, sternly. "Iss dot de vay to talk yedt
about your mamma?"
"She ain't my mamma," declared Sadie, sullenly.
"Sthop dot, Sadie!" said Mrs. Kranz. "You cand't remember how sweedt
your papa's wife was to you when you was little. Who do you s'pose
nursed you t'rough de scarlet fever dot time? Idt wass her."
"Huh!" grunted Sadie, but she took a thoughtful bite of cake.
"Undt de measles, yedt," went on Mrs. Kranz. "Like your own mamma, she
iss dot goot to you. But times iss hardt now, undt poor folks always haf
too many babies."
"She don't treat me like she was my mamma now," complained Sadie, with a
sob that changed to a hiccough as she sipped the mug of coffee that had
been the accompaniment of the cake. "She hadn't ought to told me those
quarters she put in that box was mine, when they was to pay the gas
man."
Mrs. Kranz eyed the complainant shrewdly. "Why vor shouldt you pe paid
vor he'pin' your mamma yedt?" she asked. "You vouldn't haf gone from
school home yedt undt helped her, if it hadn't been for vat she toldt
you about de money. You vorked for de money every time--aind't idt?"
Sadie hung her head.
"Dot is idt!" cried the good German woman. "You make your poor mamma
tell things to fool you, else you vould sthay avay an' blay. She haf to
bribe you to make you help her like you should. Shame! Undt she nodt go
to de school like you, undt learn better."
"I s'pose that's so," admitted Sadie, more thoughtfully. "She ain't a
'Merican like what I am, that goes to school an' learns from books."
In the end, between the ministrations of the Corner House girls and Mrs.
Kranz, the whole Goronofsky family was made happy. Sadie promised to
help her mamma without being bribed to do so; Mrs. Goronofsky, who was a
worn, tired out little woman, proved to have some heart left for her
step-daughter, after all; "the kids" were made delighted by the presents
Sadie was enabled to bring them; and Ruth went around to Mr.
Goronofsky's shop and presented him with a receipted bill for his house
rent for December.
The work of the quartette of Lady Bountifuls by no means ended with the
Goronofskys. Not a tenant of the Stower Estate was missed. Even Mrs.
Kranz herself was remembered by the Corner House girls, who presented
her, in combination, a handsome shopping bag to carry when she went
downtown to the bank.
It was a busy afternoon and evening they spent on Meadow Street--for
they did not get home to a late supper until eight o'clock. But their
comments upon their adventures were characteristic.
"It is _so_ satisfactory," said Ruth, placidly, "to make other people
happy."
"I'm dog tired," declared Agnes, "but I'd love to start right out and do
it all over again!"
"I--I hope the little Maroni baby won't lick all the red paint off that
rattle and make herself sick," sighed Tess, reflectively.
"If she does we can buy her a new rattle. It didn't cost but ten cents,"
Dot rejoined, seeing at the moment but one side of the catastrophe.
CHAPTER XVII
"THAT CIRCUS BOY"
The first Christmas since the Kenway girls had "come into" Uncle Peter's
estate was bound to be a memorable one for Ruth and Agnes and Tess and
Dot.
Mother Kenway, while she had lived, had believed in the old-fashioned
New England Christmas. The sisters had never had a tree, but they always
hung their stockings on a line behind the "base-burner" in the
sitting-room of the Bloomingsburg tenement. So now they hung them in a
row by the dining-room mantelpiece in the old Corner House.
Uncle Rufus took a great deal of interest in this proceeding. He took
out the fire-board from the old-fashioned chimneyplace, so as to give
ingress to Santa Clans when the reindeers of that good saint should land
upon the Corner House roof.
Dot held to her first belief in the personal existence of Saint Nick,
and although Tess had some doubts as to his real identity, she would not
for the world have said anything to weaken Dot's belief.
There was no stove in the way in the dining-room, for the furnace--put
into the cellar by Uncle Peter only shortly before his death--heated the
two lower floors of the main part of the house, as well as the kitchen
wing, in which the girls and Mrs. MacCall slept.
The girls had begged Neale O'Neil to hang up his stocking with theirs,
but he refused--rather gruffly, it must be confessed. Mrs. MacCall and
Uncle Rufus, however, were prevailed upon to add their hose to the line.
Aunt Sarah rather snappishly objected to "exposing her stockings to the
public view, whether on or off the person,"--so she said.
The four Corner House girls felt thankful to the queer old woman, who
was really no relation to them at all, but who accepted all their bounty
and attentions as though they were hers by right.
Indeed, at the time when there seemed some doubt as to whether Mr.
Howbridge could prove for the Kenway girls a clear title to Uncle
Peter's property, Aunt Sarah had furnished the necessary evidence, and
sent away the claimant from Ipsilanti.
There was, too, a soft side to Aunt Sarah's character; only, like the
chestnutburr, one had to get inside her shell to find it. If one of the
children was ill, Aunt Sarah was right there with the old fashioned
remedies, and although some of her "yarb teas" might be nasty to take,
they were efficacious.
Then, she was always knitting, or embroidering, something or other for
the girls. Now that there was plenty of money in the family purse, she
ordered materials just as she pleased, and knit jackets, shawls,
mittens, and "wristlets."
She was a very grim lady and dressed very plainly; although she never
said so, she liked to have the girls sit with her at their sewing. She
took infinite pains to teach them to be good needle-women, as her mother
had doubtless taught her.
So the chief present the girls bought this Christmas for Aunt Sarah was
a handsome sewing table, its drawers well supplied with all manner of
threads, silks, wools, and such like materials.
This the Kenway sisters had all "chipped in" to purchase, and the table
was smuggled into the house and hidden away in one of the spare rooms,
weeks before Christmas. The girls had purchased a new dress for Mrs.
MacCall, and had furnished out Uncle Rufus from top to toe in a suit of
black clothes, with a white vest, in which he could wait at table on
state and date occasions, as well as wear to church on Sundays.
There were, of course, small individual presents from each girl to these
family retainers, and to Aunt Sarah. The stockings bulged most
delightfully in the dining-room when they trooped down to breakfast on
Christmas morning.
Tess and Dot could scarcely eat, their eyes were so fixed upon the
delightfully knobby bundles piled under each of their stockings on the
hearth. Agnes declared Tess tried to drink her buckwheat cakes and eat
her coffee, and that Dot was in danger of sticking her fork into her eye
instead of into her mouth.
But the meal was ended at last and Uncle Rufus wheeled out Aunt Sarah's
beautiful sewing table, with her other smaller presents upon it. Ruth
told her how happy it made them all to give it to her. Aunt Sarah's keen
eye lit up as she was shown all the interesting things about her new
acquisition; but all the verbal comment she made was that she thought
"you gals better be in better business than buying gewgaws for an old
woman like me."
"Just the same, she is pleased as Punch," Mrs. MacCall whispered to
Ruth. "Only, she doesn't like to show it."
The girls quickly came to their own presents. None of the articles they
had bought for each other were of great value intrinsically; but they
all showed love and thoughtfulness. Little things that each had at some
time carelessly expressed a wish for, appeared from the stockings to
delight and warm the heart of the recipient.
There was nobody, of course, to give the two older girls any very
valuable gifts; but there was a pretty locket and chain for Ruth which
she had seen in the jewelry-store window and expressed a fondness for,
while the desire of Agnes' eyes was satisfied when she found a certain
bracelet in the toe of her stocking.
Tess had a bewildering number of books and school paraphernalia, as well
as additions to her dolls' paraphernalia; but it was Dot who sat down
breathlessly in the middle of the floor under a perfect avalanche of
treasures, all connected with her "children's" comfort and her personal
house-keeping arrangements.
It would have been almost sacrilege to have presented Dot with another
doll; for the Alice-doll that had come the Christmas before and had only
lately been graduated into short clothes, still held the largest place
in the little girl's affections.
Battered by adversity as the Alice-doll was, Dot's heart could never
have warmed toward another "child" as it did toward the unfortunate that
"Double Trouble"--that angel-faced young one from Ipsilanti--had buried
with the dried apples. But Dot's sisters had showered upon her every
imaginable comfort and convenience for the use of a growing family of
dolls, as well as particular presents to the Alice-doll herself.
"What's the matter, child?" asked Mrs. MacCall, seeing the expression on
Dot's face as she sat among her possessions. "Don't they suit?"
"Mrs. MacCall," declared Dot, gravely, "I think I shall faint. My
heart's just jumping. If gladness could kill anybody, I know I'd have to
die to show how happy I am. And I know my Alice-doll will feel just as I
do."
Uncle Rufus' daughter, Petunia Blossom, came after breakfast with
several of her brood--and the laundry cart--to take away the good things
that had been gathered for her and her family.
Petunia was "fast brack," as her father declared--an enormously fat,
jetty-black negress, with a pretty face, and a superabundance of
children. To enumerate the Blossom family, as Petunia had once done for
Ruth's information, there were:
"Two married and moved away; two at work; twins twice makes eight;
Alfredia; Jackson Montgomery Simms; Burne-Jones Whistler; the baby; and
Louisa Annette."
Ruth and her sisters had purchased, or made, small and unimportant
presents for Neale O'Neil. Neale had remembered each of them with gifts,
all the work of his own hands; a wooden berry dish and ladle for Tess'
doll's tea-table; a rustic armchair for the Alice-doll, for Dot; a
neatly made pencil box for Agnes; and for Ruth a new umbrella handle,
beautifully carved and polished, for Ruth had a favorite umbrella the
handle of which she had broken that winter.
Neale was ingenious in more ways than one. He showed this at school,
too, on several occasions. It was just after the midwinter holidays that
Mr. Marks, the grammar school principal, wished to raise the school flag
on the roof flag-staff, and it was found that the halyard and block had
been torn away by the wind.
The janitor was too old a man to make the repair and it looked as though
a professional rigger must be sent for, when Neale volunteered.
Perhaps Mr. Marks knew something about the boy's prowess, for he did not
hesitate to give his permission. Neale went up to the roof and mounted
the staff with the halyard rove through the block, and hooked the latter
in place with ease. It took but a few minutes; but half the school stood
below and held its breath, watching the slim figure swinging so
recklessly on the flag-staff.
His mates cheered him when he came down, for they had grown fond of
Neale O'Neil. The Corner House girls too, were proud of him. But Trix
Severn, who disliked Neale because he paid her no attention, hearing
Agnes praising the boy's courage and skill, exclaimed in her sneering
way:
"That circus boy! Why wouldn't he be able to do all sorts of tricks like
that? It was what he was brought up to, no doubt."
"What do you mean by that, Trix Severn?" demanded Agnes, immediately
accepting her enemy's challenge. "Neale is not a circus boy."
"Oh! he isn't?"
"No. He's never even _seen_ a circus," the positive Agnes declared.
"He told you that, did he?" laughed Trix, airily.
"He said he had never been to see a circus in his life," Agnes repeated.
"And Neale wouldn't lie."
"That's all you know about him, then," said Trix. "And I thought you
Corner House girls were such friends with Neale O'Neil," and she walked
off laughing again, refusing to explain her insinuations.
But the nickname of "circus boy" stuck to Neale O'Neil after that and he
earnestly wished he had not volunteered to fix the flag rigging. _Why_
it troubled him so, however, he did not explain to the Corner House
girls.
CHAPTER XVIII
SNOWBOUND
Tess said, gloomily, as they gathered about the study table one evening
not long after New Year's:
"I have to write a composition about George Washington. When was he
born, Ruthie?" Ruth was busy and did not appear to hear. "Say! when
_was_ he born?" repeated the ten-year-old.
"Eighteen seventy-eight, I think, dear," said Agnes, with more kindness
than confidence.
"Oh-o-o!" gasped Dot, who knew something about the "Father of His
Country." "He was dead-ed long before _that_."
"Before when?" demanded Ruth, partly waking up to the situation.
"Eighteen seventy-eight," repeated Tess, wearily.
"Of course I meant seventeen seventy-eight," interposed Agnes.
"And at that you're a long way off," observed Neale, who chanced to be
at the Corner House that evening.
"Well! you know so much, Mr. Smartie!" cried Agnes. "Tell her yourself."
"I wouldn't have given her the date of George's birth, as being right in
the middle of the Revolutionary War," exclaimed Neale, stalling for time
to figure out the right date.
"No; and you are not telling her _any_ year," said the wise Agnes.
"Children! don't scrap," murmured peace-loving Ruth, sinking into the
background--and her own algebra--again.
"Well!" complained Tess. "I haven't found out when he was born _yet_."
"Never mind, honey," said
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/21034