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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Corner House Girls in a Play, by 
+Grace Brooks Hill and R. Emmett Owen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: The Corner House Girls in a Play
+       How they rehearsed, how they acted, and what the play brought in
+
+Author: Grace Brooks Hill
+        R. Emmett Owen
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2010 [EBook #31722]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: She truly did well in this performance. (Page 252)
+_Frontispiece_]
+
+
+
+
+    THE
+    CORNER HOUSE GIRLS
+    IN A PLAY
+
+    HOW THEY REHEARSED
+    HOW THEY ACTED
+    AND WHAT THE PLAY BROUGHT IN
+
+    BY
+    GRACE BROOKS HILL
+    AUTHOR OF "THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS," "THE CORNER
+    HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL," ETC.
+
+    _ILLUSTRATED BY
+    R. EMMETT OWEN_
+
+    NEW YORK
+    BARSE & HOPKINS
+    PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+    BOOKS FOR GIRLS
+
+    The Corner House Girls Series
+    By Grace Brooks Hill
+
+    _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume,
+    75 cents, postpaid._
+
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS UNDER CANVAS
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS' ODD FIND
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS ON A TOUR
+
+    (_Other volumes in preparation_)
+
+    BARSE & HOPKINS
+
+    PUBLISHERS      NEW YORK
+
+    Copyright, 1916,
+    by
+    Barse & Hopkins
+
+    _The Corner House Girls in a Play_
+
+    VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
+    BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                 PAGE
+
+        I THE SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND                            9
+
+       II THE LADY IN THE GRAY CLOAK                          18
+
+      III BILLY BUMPS' BANQUET                                27
+
+       IV THE BASKET BALL TEAM IN TROUBLE                     42
+
+        V THE STONE IN THE POOL                               57
+
+       VI JUST OUT OF REACH                                   66
+
+      VII THE CORE OF THE APPLE                               75
+
+     VIII LYCURGUS BILLET'S EAGLE BAIT                        84
+
+       IX BOB BUCKHAM TAKES A HAND                           101
+
+        X SOMETHING ABOUT OLD TIMES                          112
+
+       XI THE STRAWBERRY MARK                                122
+
+      XII TEA WITH MRS. ELAND                                134
+
+     XIII NEALE SUFFERS A SHORTENING PROCESS                 145
+
+      XIV THE FIRST REHEARSAL                                156
+
+       XV THE HALLOWE'EN PARTY                               167
+
+      XVI THE FIVE-DOLLAR GOLD PIECE                         175
+
+     XVII THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER                              184
+
+    XVIII MISS PEPPERILL AND THE GRAY LADY                   193
+
+      XIX A THANKSGIVING SKATING PARTY                       198
+
+       XX NEALE'S ENDLESS CHAIN                              206
+
+      XXI THE CORNER HOUSE THANKSGIVING                      212
+
+     XXII CLOUDS AND SUNSHINE                                217
+
+    XXIII SWIFTWING, THE HUMMINGBIRD                         228
+
+     XXIV THE FINAL REHEARSAL                                240
+
+      XXV A GREAT SUCCESS                                    247
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                            PAGE
+
+    She truly did well in this performance        _Frontispiece_
+
+    At the moment the eagle dropped with spread talons,
+    the big dog leaped                                       103
+
+    They saw two huge pumpkin lanterns grinning a
+    welcome from the gateposts                               173
+
+    The scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward
+    through the drop                                         238
+
+
+
+
+THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND
+
+
+"I never can learn them in the wide, wide world! I just know I never
+can, Dot!"
+
+"Dear me! I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," responded Dorothy
+Kenway--only nobody ever called her by her full name, for she really was
+too small to achieve the dignity of anything longer than "Dot."
+
+"I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," she repeated, hugging the
+Alice-doll a little closer and wrapping the lace "throw" carefully about
+the shoulders of her favorite child. The Alice-doll had never enjoyed
+robust health since her awful experience of more than a year before,
+when she had been buried alive.
+
+Of course, Dot had not got as far in school as the sovereigns of
+England. She had not as yet heard very much about the history of her own
+country. She knew, of course, that Columbus discovered it, the Pilgrims
+settled it, that George Washington was the father of it, and Abraham
+Lincoln saved it.
+
+Tess Kenway was usually very quick in her books, and she was now
+prepared to enter a class in the lower grammar grade of the Milton
+school in which she would have easy lessons in English history. She had
+just purchased the history on High Street, for school would open for the
+autumn term in a few days.
+
+Mr. Englehart, one of the School Board and an influential citizen of
+Milton, had a penchant for beginning at the beginning of things. As he
+put it: "How can our children be grounded well in the history of our own
+country if they are not informed upon the salient points of English
+history--the Mother Country, from whom we obtained our first laws, and
+from whom came our early leaders?"
+
+As the two youngest Kenway girls came out of the stationery and book
+store, Miss Pepperill was entering. Tess and Dot had met Miss Pepperill
+at church the Sunday previous, and Tess knew that the rather
+sharp-featured, bespectacled lady was to be her new teacher.
+
+The girls whom Tess knew, who had already had experience with Miss
+Pepperill called her "Pepperpot." She was supposed to be very irritable,
+and she _did_ have red hair. She shot questions out at one in a most
+disconcerting way, and Dot was quite amazed and startled by the way Miss
+Pepperill pounced on Tess.
+
+"Let's see your book, child," Miss Pepperill said, seizing Tess' recent
+purchase. "Ah--yes. So you are to be in my room, are you?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," admitted Tess, timidly.
+
+"Ah--yes! What is the succession of the sovereigns of England? Name
+them!"
+
+Now, if Miss Pepperill had demanded that Tess Kenway name the Pleiades,
+the latter would have been no more startled--or no less able to reply
+intelligently.
+
+"Ah--yes!" snapped Miss Pepperill, seeing Tess' vacuous expression. "I
+shall ask you that the first day you are in my room. Be prepared to
+answer it. The succession of the sovereigns of England," and she swept
+on into the store, leaving the children on the sidewalk, wonderfully
+impressed.
+
+They had walked over into the Parade Ground, and seated themselves on
+one of the park benches in sight of the old Corner House, as Milton
+people had called the Stower homestead, on the corner of Willow Street,
+from time immemorial. Tess' hopeless announcement followed their sitting
+on the bench for at least half an hour.
+
+"Why, I can't never!" she sighed, making it positive by at least two
+negatives. "I never had an idea England had such an awful long string of
+kings. It's worse than the list of Presidents of the United States."
+
+"Is it?" Dot observed, curiously. "It must be awful annoyable to have to
+learn 'em."
+
+"Goodness, Dot! There you go again with one of your big words,"
+exclaimed Tess, in vexation. "Who ever heard of 'annoyable' before? You
+must have invented that."
+
+Dot calmly ignored the criticism. It must be confessed that she loved
+the sound of long words, and sometimes, as Agnes said, "made an awful
+mess of polysyllables." Agnes was the Kenway next older than Tess, while
+Ruth was seventeen, the oldest of all, and had for more than three years
+been the house-mother of the Kenway family.
+
+Ruth and Agnes were at home in the old Corner House at this very hour.
+There lived in the big dwelling, with the four Corner House Girls, Aunt
+Sarah Maltby (who really was no relative of the girls, but a partial
+charge upon their charity), Mrs. MacCall, their housekeeper, and old
+Uncle Rufus, Uncle Peter Stower's black butler and general factotum, who
+had been left to the care of the old man's heirs when he died.
+
+The first volume of this series, called "The Corner House Girls," told
+the story of the coming of the four sisters and Aunt Sarah Maltby to the
+Stower homestead, and of their first adventures in Milton--getting
+settled in their new home and making friends among their neighbors.
+
+In "The Corner House Girls at School," the second volume, the four
+Kenway sisters extended the field of their acquaintance in Milton and
+thereabout, entered the local schools in the several grades to which
+they were assigned, made more friends and found some few rivals. They
+began to feel, too, that responsibility which comes with improved
+fortunes, for Uncle Peter Stower had left a considerable estate to the
+four girls, of which Mr. Howbridge, the lawyer, was administrator as
+well as the girls' guardian.
+
+Now the second summer of their sojourn at the old Corner House was just
+ending, and the girls had but recently returned from a most delightful
+outing at Pleasant Cove, on the Atlantic Coast, some distance away from
+Milton, which was an inland town.
+
+All the fun and adventure of that vacation are related in "The Corner
+House Girls Under Canvas," the third volume of the series, and the one
+immediately preceding the present story.
+
+Tess was seldom vindictive; but after she had puzzled her poor brain for
+this half hour, trying to pick out and to get straight the Williams and
+Stephens and Henrys and Johns and Edwards and Richards, to say nothing
+of the Georges, who had reigned over England, she was quite flushed and
+excited.
+
+"I know I'm just going to de-_test_ that Miss Pepperpot!" she exclaimed.
+"I--I could throw this old history at her--I just could!"
+
+"But you couldn't hit her, Tess," Dot observed placidly. "You know you
+couldn't."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you can't throw anything straight--no straighter than Sammy
+Pinkney's ma. I heard her scolding Sammy the other day for throwing
+stones. She says, 'Sammy, don't you let me catch you throwing any more
+stones.'"
+
+"And did he mind her?" asked Tess.
+
+"I don't know," Dot replied reflectively. "But he says to her: 'What'll
+I do if the other fellers throw 'em at me?' 'Just you come and tell me,
+Sammy, if they do,' says Mrs. Pinkney."
+
+"Well?" queried Tess, as her sister seemed inclined to stop.
+
+"I didn't see what good that would do, myself," confessed Dot. "Telling
+Mrs. Pinkney, I mean. And Sammy says to her: 'What's the use of telling
+you, Ma? You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!' _I_ don't think
+_you_ could fling that hist'ry straight at Miss Pepperpot, Tess."
+
+"Huh!" said Tess, not altogether pleased. "I _feel_ I could hit her,
+anyway."
+
+"Maybe Aggie could learn you the names of those sov-runs----"
+
+"'Sovereigns'!" exclaimed Tess. "For pity's sake, get the word right,
+child!"
+
+Dot pouted and Tess, being in a somewhat nagging mood--which was
+entirely strange for her--continued:
+
+"And don't say 'learn' for 'teach.' How many times has Ruthie told you
+that?"
+
+"I don't care," retorted Dorothy Kenway. "I don't think so much of the
+English language--or the English sov-er-reigns--so now! If folks can
+talk, and make themselves understood, isn't that enough?"
+
+"It doesn't seem so," sighed Tess, despondent again as she glanced at
+the open history.
+
+"Oh, I tell you what!" cried Dot, suddenly eager. "You ask Neale O'Neil.
+I'm sure _he_ can help you. He teached me how to play jack-stones."
+
+Tess ignored this flagrant lapse from school English, and said, rather
+haughtily:
+
+"I wouldn't ask a boy."
+
+"Oh, my! _I_ would," Dot replied, her eyes big and round. "I'd ask
+anybody if I wanted to know anything very bad. And Neale O'Neil's quite
+the nicest boy that ever was. Aggie says so."
+
+"Ruth and I don't approve of boys," Tess said loftily. "And I don't
+believe Neale knows the sovereigns of England. Oh! look at those men,
+Dot!"
+
+Dot squirmed about on the bench to look out on Parade Street. An
+erecting gang of the telegraph company was putting up a pole. The deep
+hole had been dug for it beside the old pole, and the men, with spikes
+in their hands, were beginning to raise the new pole from the ground.
+
+Two men at either side had hold of ropes to steady the big pine stick.
+Up it went, higher and higher, while the overseer stood at the butt to
+guide it into the hole dug in the sidewalk.
+
+Just as the pole was about half raised into its place, and a lineman had
+gone quickly up a neighboring pole to fasten a guy-wire to hold it, the
+interested children on the park bench saw a woman crossing the street
+near the scene of the telegraph company men's activities.
+
+"Oh, Tess!" Dot exclaimed. "What a funny dress she wears!"
+
+"Yes," said the older Kenway girl, eying the woman quite as curiously as
+her sister.
+
+The strange woman wore a long, gray cloak, and a little gray, close
+bonnet, with a stiff, white frill framing her face. That face was very
+sweet, but rather sad of expression. The children could not see her hair
+and had no means of guessing her age, for her cheeks were healthily pink
+and her gray eyes bright.
+
+These facts Tess and Dot observed and digested in their small minds
+before the woman reached the curb.
+
+"Isn't she pretty?" whispered Tess.
+
+Before Dot could reply there sounded a wild cry from the man on the
+pole. The guy-wire had slipped.
+
+"'Ware below!" he shouted.
+
+The woman did not notice. Perhaps the close cap she wore kept her from
+hearing distinctly. The writhing wire flew through the air like a great
+snake.
+
+Tess dropped her history and sprang up; but Dot did not loose her hold
+upon the rather battered "Alice-doll" which was her dearest possession.
+She clung, indeed, to the doll all the closer, but she screamed to the
+woman quite as loudly as Tess did, and her little blue-stockinged legs
+twinkled across the grass to the point of danger, quite as rapidly as
+did Tess' brown ones.
+
+"Oh, lady! lady!" shrieked Tess. "You'll be killed!"
+
+"Please come away from there--_please_!" cried Dot.
+
+Their voices pierced to the strange lady's ears. Just as the pole began
+to waver and sink sidewise, despite the efforts of the men with the
+spikes, she looked up, saw the gesticulating children, observed the
+shadow of the pole and the writhing wire, and sprang upon the walk, and
+across it in time to escape the peril.
+
+The wire's weight brought the pole down with a crash, in spite of all
+the men could do. But the woman in the gray cloak was safe with Tess and
+Dot on the greensward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE LADY IN THE GRAY CLOAK
+
+
+"My dear girls!" the woman in the gray cloak said, with a hand on a
+shoulder of each of the younger Corner House girls, "how providential it
+was that you saw my danger. I am very much obliged to you. And how brave
+you both were!"
+
+"Thank you, ma'am," said Tess, who seldom forgot her manners.
+
+But Dot was greatly excited. "Oh, my!" she gasped, clinging tightly to
+the Alice-doll, and quite breathless. "My--my pulse _did_ jump so!"
+
+"Did it? You funny little thing," said the woman, half laughing and half
+crying. "What do you know about a pulse?"
+
+"Oh, I know it's a muscle that bumps up and down, and the doctor feels
+it to see if you're better next time he comes," blurted out Dot, nothing
+loath to show what knowledge she thought she possessed.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" cried the lady, laughing heartily now. And, dropping down
+upon the very bench where Tess and Dot had been sitting, she drew the
+two children to seats beside her. "Oh, my dear! I shall have to tell
+that to Dr. Forsyth."
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated Tess, who was looking at the pink-cheeked lady with
+admiring eyes. "Oh! _we_ know Dr. Forsyth. He is our doctor."
+
+"Is he, indeed? And who are you?" responded the lady, the sad look on
+her face quite disappearing now that she talked so animatedly with the
+little Kenways.
+
+"We are Dot and Tess Kenway," said Tess. "I'm Tess. We live just over
+there," and she pointed to the big, old-fashioned mansion across the
+Parade Ground.
+
+"Ah, then," said the woman in the gray cloak, "you are the Corner House
+girls. I have heard of you."
+
+"We are only two of them," said Dot, quickly. "There's four."
+
+"Ah! then you are only half the quartette."
+
+"I don't believe we are _half_--do you, Tess?" said Dot, seriously. "You
+see," she added to the lady, "Ruthie and Aggie are so much bigger than
+we are."
+
+The lady in the gray cloak laughed again. "You are all four of equal
+importance, I have no doubt. And you must be very happy together--you
+sisters." The sad look returned to her face. "It must be lovely to have
+three sisters."
+
+"Didn't you ever have any at all?" asked Dot, sympathetically.
+
+"I had a sister once--one very dear sister," said the lady,
+thoughtfully, and looking away across the Parade Ground.
+
+Tess and Dot gazed at each other questioningly; then Tess ventured to
+ask:
+
+"Did she die?"
+
+"I don't know," was the sad reply. "We were separated when we were very
+young. I can just remember my sister, for we were both little girls in
+pinafores. I loved my sister very much, and I am sure she loved me, and,
+if she is alive, misses me quite as much as I do her."
+
+"Oh, how sad that is!" murmured Tess. "I hope you will find her, ma'am."
+
+"Not to be thought of in this big world--not to be thought of now,"
+repeated the lady, more briskly. She picked up the history that Tess had
+dropped. "And which of you little tots studies this? Isn't English
+history rather far advanced for you?"
+
+"Tess is _nawful_ smart," Dot hastened to say. "Miss Andrews says so,
+though she's a nawful strict teacher, too. Isn't she, Tess?"
+
+Her sister nodded soberly. Her mind reverted at once to the sovereigns
+of England and Miss Pepperill. "I--I'm afraid I'm not very quick to
+learn, after all. Miss Pepperill will think me an awful dunce when I
+can't learn the sovereigns."
+
+"The sovereigns?" repeated the woman in gray, with interest. "What
+sovereigns?"
+
+So Tess (of course, with Dot's valuable help) explained her difficulty,
+and all about the new teacher Tess expected to have.
+
+"And she'll think I'm awfully dull," repeated Tess, sadly. "I just
+_can't_ make my mind remember the succession of those kings and queens.
+It's the hardest thing I ever tried to learn. Do you s'pose all English
+children have to learn it?"
+
+"I know they have an easy way of committing to memory the succession of
+their sovereigns, from William the Conqueror, down to the present time,"
+said the lady, thoughtfully. "Or, they used to have."
+
+"Oh, dear me!" wailed Tess. "I wish I knew how to remember the old
+things. But I don't."
+
+"Suppose I teach you the rhyme I learned when I was a very little girl
+at school?"
+
+"Oh, would you?" cried Tess, her pretty face lighting up as she gazed
+admiringly again at the woman in the gray cloak.
+
+"Yes. And we will add a couplet or two at the end to bring the list down
+to date--for there have been two more sovereigns since the good Queen
+Victoria passed away. Now attend! Here is the rhyme. I will recite it
+for you, and then I will write it down and you may learn it at your
+leisure."
+
+Both Tess and Dot--and of course the Alice-doll--were very attentive as
+the lady recited:
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+        Then William, his son;
+      Henry, Stephen, and Henry,
+        Then Richard and John;
+      Next Henry the Third;
+        Edwards one, two, and three,
+      And again after Richard
+        Three Henrys we see;
+      Two Edwards, third Richard,
+        If rightly I guess,
+      Two Henrys, sixth Edward,
+        Queen Mary, Queen Bess,
+      Then Jamie, the Scotchman,
+        Then Charles, whom they slew,
+      Yet received after Cromwell
+        Another Charles, too;
+      Next James the Second
+        Ascended the throne;
+      Then good William and Mary
+        Together came on;
+      Till Anne, Georges four,
+        And fourth William, all past,
+      God sent Queen Victoria,
+        Who long was the last;
+      Then Edward, the Seventh
+        But shortly did reign,
+      With George, the Fifth,
+        England's present sovereign.'
+
+There you have it--with an original four lines at the end to complete
+the list," laughed the lady.
+
+Dot's eyes were big; she had lost the sense of the rhyme long before;
+but Tess was very earnest. "I--I believe I _could_ learn 'em that way,"
+she confessed. "I can remember poetry quite well. Can't I, Dot?"
+
+"You recite 'Little Drops of Water, Little Grains of Sand' beautifully,"
+said the smallest Corner House girl, loyally.
+
+"Of course you can learn it," said the lady, confidently. "Now,
+Tess--is that your name--Theresa?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am--only almost nobody ever calls me by it _all_. Miss Andrews
+used to when she was very, very angry. But I hope my new teacher, Miss
+Pepperill, won't be angry with me at all--if I can only learn these
+sovereigns."
+
+"You shall," declared the lady in gray. "I have a pencil here in my bag.
+And here is a piece of paper. I will write it all out for you and you
+can study it from now until the day school opens. Then, when this Miss
+Pepperill demands it, you will have it pat--right on the end of your
+tongue."
+
+"I hope so," said Tess, with dawning cheerfulness.
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+      Then William, his son;'
+
+I believe I _can_ learn to recite it all if you are kind enough to write
+it down."
+
+The lady did so, writing the lines in a beautiful, round hand, and so
+plain that even Dot, who was a trifle "weak" in reading anything but
+print, could quite easily spell out the words.
+
+"Weren't there any more names for kings when those lived?" the youngest
+Kenway asked seriously.
+
+"Why, what makes you ask that?" asked the smiling lady.
+
+"Maybe there weren't enough to go 'round," continued the puzzled Dot.
+"There are so many of 'em of one name----Williams, and Georges, and
+Edwardses. Don't English people have any more names to give to their
+sov-runs?"
+
+"Sov-er-eigns," whispered Tess, sharply.
+
+"That's what I mean," said the placid Dot. "The lady knows what I mean."
+
+"Of course I do, dear," agreed the woman in the gray cloak. "But I
+expect the mothers of kings, like the mothers of other little boys, like
+to name their sons after their fathers.
+
+"Now, children, I must go," she added briskly, getting up off the bench
+and handing Tess the written paper. "Good-bye. I hope I shall meet you
+both again very soon. Let me kiss you, Tess--and you, Dorothy Kenway. It
+has done me good to know you."
+
+She kissed both children quickly, and then set off along the Parade
+Ground walk. Tess and Dot bade her good-bye shrilly, turning themselves
+toward the old Corner House.
+
+"Oh, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, suddenly.
+
+"What's the matter now?" asked Dot.
+
+"We never asked the lady her name--or who she was."
+
+"We-ell----would that be perlite?" asked Dot, doubtfully.
+
+"Yes. She asked our names. We don't know anything about her--and I _do_
+think she is so nice!"
+
+"So do I," agreed Dot. "And that gray cloak----"
+
+"With the pretty little bonnet and ruche," added Tess.
+
+"She isn't the Salvation Army," said Dot, remembering that that order
+was uniformed from seeing them on the streets of Bloomingsburg, where
+the Kenways had lived before they had fallen heir to Uncle Peter
+Stower's estate.
+
+"Of course not!" Tess cried. "And she don't look like one o' those
+deaconesses that came to see Ethel Mumford's mother when she was
+sick--do you remember?"
+
+"Of course I remember--everything!" said the positive Dot. "Wasn't I a
+great, big girl when we came to Milton to live?"
+
+"Why--why," stammered her sister, not wishing to displease Dot, but
+bound to be honest. "You aren't a very big girl, even now, Dot Kenway."
+
+"Humph!" exclaimed Dot, quite vexed. "I wear bigger shoes and stockings,
+and Ruth is having Miss Ann Titus let down the hems of all my old
+dresses a full inch--so now!"
+
+"I expect you _have_ grown some, Dot," admitted Tess, reflectively. "But
+you aren't big enough even now to brag about."
+
+The youngest Kenway might have been deeply offended by this--and shown
+that she had taken offence, too--had something new not taken her
+attention at the very moment she and Tess were entering the side gate of
+the old Corner House premises.
+
+The house was a three story and attic mansion which was set well back
+from Main Street, but the side of which was separated from Willow Street
+by only a narrow strip of sward. The kitchen was in the wing nearest
+this last-named street, and there was a big, half-enclosed side porch,
+to which the woodshed was attached, and beyond which was the long grape
+arbor.
+
+The length of the old Corner House yard, running parallel with Willow
+Street, was much greater than its width. The garden, summer house,
+henhouses, and other outbuildings were at the back. The lawn in front
+was well shaded, and there were plenty of fruit trees around the house.
+Not many dwellings in Milton had as much yard-room as the Stower
+homestead.
+
+"Oh my, Tess!" gasped Dot, with deep interest, staring at the porch
+stoop. "Who is that--and what's he doing?"
+
+"Dear me!" returned Tess, hesitating at the gate. "That's Seneca
+Sprague--the man who wears a linen duster and straw hat all the year
+round, and 'most always goes barefooted. He--he isn't just right, they
+say, Dot."
+
+"Just right about what?" asked Dot.
+
+"Mercy me, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, exasperated.
+
+"Well, what _is_ he?" asked Dot, with vigor.
+
+"Well--I guess," said Tess, "that he thinks he is a minister. And, I do
+declare, I believe he's preaching to Sandyface and her kittens! Listen,
+Dot!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BILLY BUMPS' BANQUET
+
+
+Almost the first thing that would have caught the attention of the
+visitor to the old Corner House at almost any time, was the number of
+pets that hovered about that kitchen porch. Ruth, with a sigh, sometimes
+admitted that she was afraid she supported a menagerie.
+
+Just at this hour--it was approaching noon--Mrs. MacCall, or the girl
+who helped her in the kitchen, might be expected to appear at the door
+with a plate of scraps or vegetable peelings or a little spare milk or
+other delicacy to tempt the appetites of the dumb creatures that
+subsisted upon the kindness of the Corner House family.
+
+The birds, of course, got their share. In the winter the old Corner
+House was the rendezvous of a chattering throng of snow-buntings and
+sparrows and starlings, for the children tied suet and meat-bones to the
+branches of the fruit trees, as well as scattered crumbs upon the
+snow-crust. In summer the feathered beggars took toll as they pleased of
+the cherries and small fruits in the garden.
+
+In the garden, too, was the only martin house in town, set upon a tall
+pole. There every spring a battle royal went on between the coming
+martins and the impudent sparrows, as the latter horde always
+appropriated the martin house during the absence of its proper owners in
+the South. Each cherry tree had its robin's nest--sometimes two. Mr.
+Robin likes to be near the supply of his favorite fruit. The wrens built
+under the eaves of the porch, and above the windows, in sheltered
+places. All the pigeons in the neighborhood flew here to strut and coo,
+and help eat any grain that might be thrown out.
+
+What one saw now, waiting at the porch steps, was principally a family
+of cats. There were no less than nine posing expectantly before the
+queer looking character known to Milton folks as Seneca Sprague.
+
+First of all, Sandyface, the speckled tabby-cat, sat placidly washing
+her face on the lower step. Close at her back, on the ground--one was
+even playing with its mother's steadily waving tail--was Sandyface's
+latest family, the four kittens bearing the remarkable names of
+Starboard, Port, Hard-a-lee and Mainsheet.
+
+Grouped farther away from the mother cat were the four well-grown young
+cats, Spotty, Almira, Popocatepetl and Bungle.
+
+Much farther in the background, and in the attitude of sleep, with his
+head on his forepaws, but with a blinking eye that lost nothing of what
+went on at the porch (for Mrs. MacCall might appear at any moment with
+his own particular dish) lay a big Newfoundland dog, with a noble head,
+intelligent brown eyes, and a muzzle now graying with age. This was the
+Corner House girls' newest and most valued pet, Tom Jonah.
+
+In addition, on the clothes-drying green, was Billy Bumps. This
+suggestively named individual was a sturdy, wise-looking goat, with a
+face and chin-whisker which Mrs. MacCall declared was "as long as the
+moral law," and whose proclivity to eat anything that could be
+masticated was well-known to the Kenway children.
+
+This collection of dumb pets the tall, lank, barefooted man in the
+broken straw hat and linen duster, now faced with a serious mien as
+though he were a real preacher and addressed a human congregation.
+
+Seneca Sprague was a harmless person, considered "not quite right," as
+Tess had said, by his fellow-townsmen. Whether his oddities arose from a
+distraught mind, or an indulgence in a love of publicity, it would be
+hard to say.
+
+His sharp-featured face and long, luxurious iron-gray hair, which he
+sometimes wore knotted up like a woman's, marked him wherever he went.
+Even those who thought him the possessor of a mind diseased agreed that
+he was quite harmless.
+
+He came and went as he pleased, often preaching on street corners a
+doctrine which included a belief in George Washington as a supernatural
+being; and he was patriotic to the core.
+
+Sometimes bad boys made fun of him, and followed and pelted him in the
+street; but, of course, the Corner House girls, who were kind to
+everybody and everything, would not have thought of harrying the queer
+old man, or ridiculing him.
+
+Occasionally Seneca Sprague wrote and had printed a tract in which he
+ramblingly expressed his religious and patriotic beliefs, and an edition
+of this tract he was now selling from house to house in Milton. Ruth
+had, of course, purchased one and as Tess and Dot came into the old
+Corner House yard, Mr. Sprague was just turning away from the door, and
+had caught sight of the expectant congregation of pets gathered below
+him.
+
+"Lo, and behold! lo, and behold!" ejaculated Seneca Sprague, in a solemn
+and resonant voice. "What saith the Scriptures? Him that hath ears to
+hear, let him hear."
+
+Every cat's ears were pricked forward expectantly and even Tom Jonah
+lifted his glossy ears--probably hearing Mrs. MacCall's step at the
+kitchen door. Billy Bumps lifted a ruminant head and blatted softly.
+
+"Thus saith the prophet," went on Seneca Sprague, in his sing-song tone.
+"There is yet a little time in which man may repent. Then cometh the
+Crack o' Doom! Beware! beware! beware!"
+
+Here Dot whispered to Tess: "How did Mr. Seneca Sprague come to know so
+much about prophets, and what's going to happen, and all that? And what
+_is_ the Crack o' Doom?"
+
+"Mercy, I don't know, child!" exclaimed Tess. "I'm sure _I_ didn't crack
+it."
+
+The queer old man was interrupted just here, too, by Ruth Kenway's
+reappearance upon the porch. Ruth was a very intelligent looking girl,
+if not exactly a pretty one. She was dark and her hair was black; she
+had warm, brown eyes and a sweet, steady smile that pleased most people.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Sprague!" she said, attracting that queer individual's
+attention. He actually swept off his torn straw hat and bowed before
+her.
+
+Ruth's voice was low and pleasant. Mrs. MacCall said she had an old head
+upon young shoulders. But there had been good reason for the oldest of
+the Corner House girls to show in her look and manner the effect of
+responsibility and burden of forethought beyond her years.
+
+Before the fortune had come to them the little Kenways had had only a
+small pension to exist upon, and they had had to share that with Aunt
+Sarah Maltby. For nearly two years Ruth had taken her mother's place and
+looked after the family.
+
+It had made her seem old beyond her real age; but it had likewise given
+her a confidence in herself which she otherwise would not have had.
+People deferred to Ruth Kenway; even Mr. Howbridge thought she was quite
+a wonderful girl.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Sprague," she said again. "I meant to tell you that you are
+welcome to some of those fall pippins, down there by the hen-run--if
+you care to pick them up. Just help yourself. I know you don't use meat,
+and that you live on fruit and vegetables; and apples are hard to get at
+the store."
+
+"Thank you--thank you," said the strange, old man, politely. "I will
+avail myself of the privilege you so kindly offer. It is true I live on
+the fruits of the earth wholly, for are we not commanded to shed no
+blood--no, not at all? Yea, verily, he who lives by the sword shall die
+by the sword----"
+
+"And I hope you will like the pippins, Mr. Sprague," broke in Ruth,
+knowing how long-winded the old fellow was, and being cumbered by many
+cares herself just then.
+
+"Ah! there you are, children," she added, addressing Tess and Dot. "Come
+right in and make ready for lunch. Don't let us keep Mrs. MacCall
+waiting. She and Linda are preserving to-day and they want to get the
+lunch over and out of the way."
+
+The smaller girls hastened into the house, thus admonished, and up to
+the dressing room connected with the two, big, double bedrooms in the
+other wing, which the four sisters had occupied ever since coming to the
+old Corner House. Ruth went with them to superintend the washing of
+hands and face, smoothing of hair and freshening of frocks and ribbons.
+Ruth had to act as inspector after the youngest Kenway's ablutions,
+Tess declaring: "Dot doesn't always wash into all the corners."
+
+"I do, too, Tess Kenway!" cried the smaller girl. "Ruthie has to watch
+us 'cause _you_ button your apron crooked. You know you do!"
+
+"I don't mean to," said Tess, "but I can't see behind me. I'd like to be
+as neat looking all the time as that lady in the gray cloak. Oh, Ruthie!
+who was she?"
+
+"I have no idea whom you are talking about," said the elder sister,
+curiously. "'The lady in the gray cloak'? What lady in a gray cloak?"
+
+At once Tess and Dot began to explain. They were both eager, they were
+both vociferous; and the particulars of the morning's adventure,
+including the meeting with Miss Pepperill, the falling of the telegraph
+pole, the woman in the gray cloak, and the sovereigns of England, became
+most remarkably mixed in the general relation of facts.
+
+"Mercy! Mercy, children!" cried Ruth, in despair. "Let us go at the
+matter in something like order. Why did the lady in the gray cloak want
+you to learn the succession of the sovereigns of England? And did the
+telegraph pole hit poor Miss Pepperill, or was she merely scared by its
+fall?"
+
+Tess stared at her older sister wonderingly. "Well, I do despair!" she
+breathed at last, repeating one of good Mrs. MacCall's odd exclamations.
+"I never did suppose you could misunderstand a body so, Ruthie Kenway."
+
+Ruth threw back her head at that and laughed heartily. Then she
+endeavored to get at the meat in the nut by asking questions. Soon--by
+the time her little sisters were ready to descend to the dining
+room--Ruth had a fair idea of the happening and the reason for the
+interest Tess and Dot displayed in the identity of the woman in the gray
+cloak.
+
+But Ruth could not help the little ones to discover the name of the
+stranger. They all went down to dinner when Uncle Rufus rang the gong at
+the hall door.
+
+That front hall of the old Corner House was a vast place, with a gallery
+all around it at the level of the second story, out of which opened the
+"grand" bedrooms (only one of which had ever been occupied during the
+girls' occupancy of the house, and that by Aunt Sarah) and it had a
+broad staircase with beautifully carved balustrades.
+
+Uncle Rufus was a tall (though stooped), lean and brown negro, with a
+fringe of snow-white wool around his brown, bald crown. He always
+appeared to serve at table in a long, claw-hammer coat, a white vest and
+trousers, and gray spats. He was the type of old Southern house servant
+one reads about, seldom finds in the North; and he had lived in the old
+Corner House and served Uncle Peter Stower "endurin' of twenty-four
+year," as he often boasted.
+
+Uncle Rufus did much more than serve the table, care for the silver and
+linen, and perform the other duties of a butler. He was Ruth's chief
+assistant in and out of the house. Despite his age, and occasional
+attacks of rheumatism, he was "purty spry yit," according to his own
+statement. And since the Kenway girls had come to the old house, Uncle
+Rufus seemed to have taken a new lease on life.
+
+Aunt Sarah Maltby was already in her place at the table when Ruth and
+the two smaller girls entered the dining room. She was a withered wisp
+of a woman, with bright brown eyes under rather heavy brows. There were
+three deep wrinkles between her eyes; otherwise Aunt Sarah did not show
+in her countenance many of the ravages of time.
+
+Her hair was only a little frosted; she wore it crimped on the sides,
+doing it up carefully in little "pigtails" every night before she
+retired. She was scrupulous in the care of her hands, being one of those
+old ladies who almost never are seen bare-handed--wearing mits or gloves
+on all occasions.
+
+Her plainly made dresses were starched and prim in every particular. She
+was a spinster who never told her age, and defied the public to guess
+it! Living a sort of detached life in the Kenway family, nothing went on
+in domestic affairs of which she was not aware; yet she was seldom
+helpful in any emergency. Usually, if she interfered at all, it was at a
+time when Ruth could have well excused her assistance.
+
+Aunt Sarah had chosen the best bedroom in the house when first they had
+come to Milton to live; and, as well, she had the best there was to be
+had of everything else. She had, all her life, lived selfishly, been
+waited upon, and considered her own comfort first. It was too late now
+for Aunt Sarah to change in many particulars.
+
+Mrs. MacCall bustled in from the kitchen, her face rather red and a
+burned stripe on her forearm which she had floured over to take out the
+smart. "Always get burned when I am driv' like I be to-day," declared
+the housekeeper, whom Ruth insisted should always eat at their table.
+Mrs. MacCall was much more than an ordinary houseworker; she was the
+friend and confidant of the Kenway sisters, and was nearer to all their
+hearts than was stiff and almost wordless Aunt Sarah.
+
+"Do _you_ know who the lady in the gray cloak is?" asked Tess, of Mrs.
+MacCall, having put the question fruitlessly to both Uncle Rufus and
+Aunt Sarah.
+
+"What's that--a conundrum?" asked the housekeeper. "Don't bother me,
+child, with questions to-day. I've got too much on my mind."
+
+"I guess," sighed Tess to Dot, "we never _shall_ find out who she is."
+
+"Don't mind," said the comforting Dorothy. "She gave you the list of
+sov-runs. You've got them, anyhow."
+
+"But I _do_ mind!" declared Tess. "She is just one of the nicest ladies
+I ever met. Of course I want----"
+
+But who is this bursting into the dining room like a young cyclone,
+and late to lunch? "Oh, Agnes! you are late again," said Ruth,
+admonishingly. Aunt Sarah glared at the newcomer, while Mrs.
+MacCall said:
+
+"You come pretty near not getting anything more than cold pieces,
+child."
+
+All their wrath was turned, however, by Agnes' smile--and her beauty.
+Nobody--not even Aunt Sarah Maltby--could retain a scowl and still look
+at Agnes Kenway, plump and pretty, and brown from the sea air and sun.
+Naturally she was light, blue-eyed and with golden-yellow hair. The hair
+was sunburned now and her round cheeks were as brown as fall leaves in
+the woods.
+
+"Oh, dear! I couldn't really help being late," she said, dropping into
+the seat Uncle Rufus pulled out for her. The old darkey began at once
+heaping her plate with tidbits. He all but worshipped Ruth; but Agnes he
+petted and spoiled.
+
+"I couldn't help being late," she repeated. "What do you think, Ruth?
+Eva Larry was just telling me at the front gate that Mr. Marks has
+threatened to forfeit all the basket ball games our team won in the
+half-series last spring against the other teams of the Milton County
+League, and will refuse to let us play the series out this fall. Isn't
+that _awful_?"
+
+"I don't know," said Ruth, placidly; she was not a basket ball
+enthusiast herself. But Agnes had secured a place on the first team of
+the Milton Schools a few weeks before the June closing. She was
+athletic, and, although only in the grammar grade then, was big and
+strong for her age.
+
+"I don't know just how awful it is," repeated the oldest sister. "What
+have you all done that the principal should make that ruling?"
+
+"Goodness knows!" wailed Agnes. "I'm sure _I_ haven't done anything."
+
+"Of course you haven't, Aggie," put in Dot, warmly. "You never _do_!"
+
+This made the family laugh. Dot's loyalty to Agnes was really
+phenomenal. No matter what Agnes did, it must be all right in the little
+one's eyes.
+
+"Well, I don't care," repeated Dot, sturdily, "Agnes is awful good!
+'Course, not the same goodness as Ruthie; but I know she doesn't break
+any school rules. And she knows a lot!"
+
+"I wish she knew who my gray lady is," put in Tess, rather
+complainingly.
+
+"What gray lady?" demanded Agnes, quickly.
+
+Dot, the voluble, got ahead of her sister in this explanation. "She
+isn't the Salvation Army, nor she isn't a deaconess like Mrs. Mumford
+had come to see her; but she's something awfully religious, I know."
+
+Tess managed to tell again about the sovereigns of England, too.
+
+"Oh, I know whom you mean," Agnes said briskly. "I saw her with you up
+on the Parade. Eva Larry told me she was the matron of the Women's and
+Children's Hospital--and they're going to shut it up."
+
+"The child means Mrs. Eland," said Mrs. MacCall, interestedly. "She is a
+splendid woman and that hospital is doing a great work. You don't mean
+they are really going to close it, Agnes?"
+
+"So Eva says. They have to. There are no funds, and two or three rich
+people who used to help them every year have died without leaving the
+hospital any legacy. Mrs. Eland doesn't know what will become of her
+now. She's been matron and acting superintendent ever since the hospital
+was opened, five years ago. Dr. Forsyth is the head visiting physician."
+
+"Mercy, child!" gasped Ruth. "Where _do_ you pick up so much gossip?"
+
+"Eva Larry has been here," said Tess, soberly. "And, you know, she's a
+fluid talker. You said so yourself, Ruthie."
+
+"Fluent! fluent!" gasped Agnes. "And Eva always does have the news."
+
+"She is growing up to be a second Miss Ann Titus," said Ruth drily. "And
+I think Tess got it about right. She _is_ a fluid speaker. When Eva
+talks it is just like opening the spigot and letting the water run."
+
+It was later, after lunch was over, and Tess and Dot had wandered into
+the garden with their dolls. Tess said, reflectively:
+
+"I wish awfully we might help that Mrs. Eland. She's such a lovely lady.
+And I know the sovereigns of England half by heart already."
+
+Dot was usually practical. "Let's gather her some apples and take them
+to her," she suggested.
+
+"We-ell," said Tess, slowly. "That won't keep the hospital going, but
+maybe she likes apples."
+
+"Who doesn't?" demanded Dot, stoutly. "Come on."
+
+When they reached the fall pippin tree which, that year, was loaded with
+golden fruit, the two little girls were quite startled at what they saw.
+
+"O-o-oh!" gasped Dot. "See Billy Bumps!"
+
+"For pity's sake! what's he doing?" rejoined Tess, in amazement.
+
+The old goat had the freedom of the yard, as the garden was shut away
+from him by a strong wire fence. He liked apples himself, did Billy
+Bumps, and perhaps he considered the bagful that Mr. Seneca Sprague had
+picked up and prepared to carry away, a direct poaching upon his
+preserves.
+
+Mr. Sprague had reclined on the soft grass under the wide-spreading tree
+and filled his own stomach to repletion, as could be seen by the cores
+thrown out in a circle about him. Billy Bumps had approached, eyed the
+long hair of the "prophet" askance, and finally began to nibble.
+
+The luxuriant growth of hair that the odd, old man had allowed to grow
+for years, seemed to attract Billy Bumps' palate. Mr. Seneca Sprague
+slept and Billy gently nibbled at the hair on one side of Seneca's head.
+
+It was just at this moment that Tess and Dot spied the tableau. Billy
+Bumps browsing on Seneca Sprague's hair was a sight to startle and amaze
+anybody.
+
+"O-o-oh!" gasped Dot again.
+
+"Billy! you mustn't!" shrieked Tess, realizing that all of the
+"prophet's" hair was in danger, and fearing, perhaps, that, snake-like,
+Billy might be about gradually to draw the whole of Mr. Seneca Sprague
+within his capacious maw.
+
+"Billy! stop!" cried both girls together.
+
+At this moment Mr. Sprague awoke. Between the shrieking of the little
+girls and the activities of Mr. Sprague when he learned what was going
+on, Billy Bumps' banquet was quite spoiled.
+
+"Get out, you beast!" shouted the "prophet," but using most
+unprophetical language. "Ow! ow! ouch!"
+
+For Billy had no idea of losing what he had already masticated. He
+pulled so hard that he drew Mr. Sprague over on his back, where he lay
+with his legs kicking in the air, wild yells of surprise and pain
+issuing from him.
+
+Over the fence at the rear of the Corner House premises bobbed a flaxen
+head, and a boyish voice shouted: "What's the matter, girls?"
+
+"Oh, Neale O'Neil!" shrieked Dot. "Do come! Quick! Billy Bumps is eating
+up Mr. Sneaker Sp'ague--and he's beginning at his hair."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BASKET BALL TEAM IN TROUBLE
+
+
+Billy Bumps backed away in time to escape the vigorous blow Neale O'Neil
+aimed at him with the stick he had picked up. But the old goat had
+managed to tear loose some of the hair on one side of the odd, old
+fellow's head, and now stood contemplating the angry and excited
+Sprague, with the hair hanging out of his mouth and mingling with his
+own long beard.
+
+"Shorn of my locks! shorn of my locks! Samson has lost his glory and
+strength--yea, verily!" cried the owner of the hair, mournfully. "Yea,
+how hath the mighty fallen and the people imagined a vain thing! And if
+there were anything here hard enough to throw at that old goat!"
+
+Thus getting down to a more practical and modern form of language,
+Seneca Sprague looked wrathfully around for a club or a rock, nothing
+less being sufficiently hard to suit him.
+
+"Oh, you mustn't!" cried Dot. "Poor Billy Bumps doesn't know any better.
+Why, once he chewed up my Alice-doll's best dress. And _I_ didn't hit
+him for it!"
+
+A comparison of a doll's dress with his own hair did not please Mr.
+Sprague much. He shook his now ragged head, from which the lock of hair
+had been torn so roughly. Billy Bumps considered this a challenge and,
+lowering his horns, suddenly charged the despoiled prophet.
+
+"Drat the beast!" yelled Seneca, forgetting his Scriptural language
+entirely; and leaped into the air just in time to make a passage for
+Billy Bumps between his long legs.
+
+Neale, for laughter, could not help.
+
+Slam! went Billy's horns against the end of the hen-house. Mr. Sprague
+was not there to catch the goat on the rebound, for, leaving his bag of
+apples, he rushed for the side gate and got out upon Willow Street
+without much regard for the order of his going, voicing prophecies this
+time that had only to do with Billy Bumps' immediate future.
+
+The disturbance brought Ruth and Agnes running from the house, but only
+in time to see the wrathful Seneca Sprague, his linen duster flapping
+behind him, as he disappeared along Willow Street. When Ruth heard about
+Billy Bumps' banquet, she sent the bag of apples to Seneca Sprague's
+little shanty which he occupied, down on the river dock.
+
+"Of all the ridiculous things a goat ever did, that is the most
+ridiculous!" exclaimed Agnes.
+
+"There's more than one hair in the butter this time," repeated Neale
+O'Neil, with laughter.
+
+"I can't laugh, even at that stale joke," sighed Agnes.
+
+"What's the matter, Aggie?" demanded Neale. "Have you soured on the
+world completely?"
+
+"I feel as though I had," confessed Agnes, her sweet eyes vastly
+troubled and her red lips in a pout. "What do you think, Neale?"
+
+"A whole lot of things," returned the boy. "What do you want me to
+think?"
+
+"Mr. Smartie! But tell me: Have you heard anything about our basket ball
+team being set back? Eva told me she'd heard Mr. Marks was dreadfully
+displeased at something we'd done and that he said we shouldn't win the
+pennant."
+
+"Not win the pennant?" cried Neale, aghast. "Why, you girls have got it
+cinched!"
+
+"Not if Mr. Marks declares all the games we won last spring forfeited. I
+think he's too, too mean!" cried Agnes.
+
+"Oh, he wouldn't do that!" urged Neale.
+
+"She says he is going to."
+
+"Eve Larry doesn't always get things straight," said Neale,
+comfortingly. "But what does he do it for?"
+
+"I don't know. I'm sure _I_ haven't done anything."
+
+"Of course not!" chuckled her boy friend, looking at her rather
+roguishly. "Who was it proposed that raid on old Buckham's strawberry
+patch that time, coming home from Fleeting?"
+
+"Oh! he couldn't know about that," cried Agnes, actually turning pale at
+the suggestion.
+
+"I don't know," Neale said slowly. "Trix Severn was in your crowd then,
+and she'd tell anything if she got mad."
+
+"And she's mad all right," groaned Agnes.
+
+"I believe she is--with you Corner House girls," added Neale O'Neil.
+
+"She'd be telling on herself--the mean thing!" snapped Agnes.
+
+"But she is not on the team. She was along only as a rooter. The
+electric car broke down alongside of Buckham's strawberry patch. Wasn't
+that it?"
+
+"Uh-huh," admitted Agnes. "And the berries _did_ look so tempting."
+
+"You girls got into Buckham's best berries," chuckled Neale. "I heard he
+was quite wild about it."
+
+"We didn't take many. And I really didn't think about it's being
+stealing," Agnes said slowly. "We just did it for a lark."
+
+"Of course. 'Didn't mean to' is an old excuse," retorted the boy.
+
+"Well, Mr. Buckham couldn't have known about it then," cried Agnes. "I
+don't believe Mr. Marks heard of it through him. If he had, why not
+before this time, after months have gone by?"
+
+"I know. It's all blown over and forgotten, when up it pops again.
+'Murder will out,' they say. But you girls only murdered a few
+strawberries. It looks to me," added Neale O'Neil, "as though somebody
+was trying to get square."
+
+"Get square with _whom_?" demanded Agnes.
+
+"Well--you were all in it, weren't you?"
+
+"All the team?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I suppose so. But Trix and some of the others picked and ate quite as
+many berries as we did. The girls that went over to Fleeting to root for
+us were all in it, too."
+
+"I know," Neale said. "If the farmer had been sure who you were, or any
+of the electric car men had told---- Had the car all to yourselves,
+didn't you?"
+
+"We girls were the only passengers," said Agnes.
+
+"Then make up your mind to it," the wise Neale rejoined, "that if Mr.
+Marks has only recently been told of the raid, some girl has been
+blabbing. The farmer or the conductor or the motorman would have told at
+once. They wouldn't have waited until three months and more had passed."
+
+"Oh dear, Neale! do you think that?"
+
+"It looks just like a mean girl's trick. Some telltale," returned the
+boy, in disgust.
+
+"Trix Severn might do it, I s'pose, because she doesn't like me any
+more."
+
+"You remember what Mr. Marks told us all last spring when we grammar
+grade fellows were let into the high school athletics? He said that
+one's conduct outside of school would govern the amount of latitude he
+would allow us in school athletics. I guess he meant you girls, too."
+
+"He's an awfully strict old thing!" complained Agnes.
+
+"They tell me," pursued Neale O'Neil, "that once a part of the baseball
+nine played hookey to go swimming at Ryer's Ford, and Mr. Marks
+immediately forfeited all the games in the Inter-scholastic League for
+that year, and so punished the whole school."
+
+"That's not fair!" exploded Agnes.
+
+"I don't know whether it is or not. But I know the baseball captain this
+year was mighty strict with us fellows."
+
+The topic of the promised punishment of the basket ball team for an old
+offense was discussed almost as much at the Corner House that evening as
+was the "lady in gray" and the sovereigns of England.
+
+Tess kept these last subjects alive, for she was studying the rhyme and
+would try to recite it to everybody that would listen--including Linda,
+who scarcely understood ten words of English, and Sandyface and her
+family, gathered for their supper in the woodshed. Tess was troubled
+about the closing of the Women's and Children's Hospital, because of its
+effect upon Mrs. Eland, too.
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+        Then William, the son;
+      Henry, Stephen and----'
+
+I do hope," ruminated Tess, "that that poor Mrs. Eland won't be turned
+out of her place. Don't you hope so, Ruthie?"
+
+"I am sure it would be a calamity if the hospital were closed," agreed
+the older sister. "And the matron must be a very lovely lady, as you
+say, Tess."
+
+"She is awfully nice--isn't she, Dot?" pursued Tess, who usually
+expected the support of Dorothy.
+
+"Just as nice as she can be," agreed the smallest Corner House girl.
+"Couldn't she come to live in our house if she can't stay in the
+horsepistol any longer?"
+
+"At the _what_, child?" gasped Agnes. "What is it you said?"
+
+"Well--where she lives now," Dot responded, dodging the doubtful word.
+
+"Goodness, dear!" laughed Ruth, "we can't make the old Corner House a
+refuge for destitute females."
+
+"I don't care!" spoke up Dot, quickly. "Didn't they make the
+Toomey-Smith house, on High Street into a home for indignant old maids?"
+
+At that the older girls shouted with laughter.
+"'In-di-gent'--'in-di-gent'! child," corrected Agnes, at last. "That
+means without means--poor--unable to care for themselves. 'Indignant old
+maids,' indeed!"
+
+"Maybe they _were_ indignant," suggested Tess, too tender hearted to see
+Dot's ignorance exposed in public, despite her own private criticism of
+the little one's misuse of the English language. "See how indignant
+Aunt Sarah is--and _she's_ an old maid."
+
+This amused Ruth and Agnes even more than Dot's observation. It was true
+that Aunt Sarah Maltby was frequently "an indignant old maid."
+
+But Tess endured the laughter calmly. She was deeply interested in the
+problem of Mrs. Eland's future, and she said:
+
+"Maybe Uncle Peter ought to have left the hospital some of his money
+when he died, instead of leaving it all to us and to Aunt Sarah."
+
+"Do you want to give up some of your monthly allowance to help support
+the hospital, Tess?" demanded Ruth, briskly.
+
+"I--I---- Well, I couldn't give _much_," said the smaller girl,
+seriously, "for a part of it goes to missions and the Sunday School
+money box, and part to Sadie Goronofsky's cousin who has a nawful bad
+felon, and can't work on the paper flowers just now----"
+
+"Why, child!" the oldest Kenway said, with a tender smile, and putting
+her hand lightly on Tess' head, "I didn't know about that. How much of
+your pin money goes each month to charity already? You only have a
+dollar and a half."
+
+"I--I keep half a dollar for myself," confessed Tess. "I could give part
+of that to the hospital."
+
+"I'll give some of my pin money, too," announced Dot, gravely, "if it
+will keep Mrs. Eland from being turned out of the horsepistol."
+
+Ruth and Agnes did not chide the little one for her mispronunciation of
+the hard word this time, but they looked at each other seriously. "I
+wonder if Uncle Peter was one of those rich people who should have
+remembered the institution in his will?" Ruth said.
+
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Agnes. "If we go around hunting for duties Uncle
+Peter Stower left undone, and do them for him, where will _we_ be? There
+will be no money left for ourselves."
+
+"You need not be afraid," Ruth said, with a smile. "Mr. Howbridge will
+not let us use our money foolishly. He is answerable for every penny of
+it to the Court. But maybe he will approve of our giving a proper sum
+towards a fund for keeping the Women's and Children's Hospital open."
+
+"Is there such a fund?" demanded Agnes.
+
+"There will be, I think. If everybody is interested----"
+
+"And how you going to interest 'em?" asked the skeptical Agnes.
+
+"Talk about it! Publicity! That is what is needed," declared Ruth,
+vigorously. "Why! we might all do something."
+
+"Who--all? I want to know!" responded her sister. "I don't have a cent
+more than I need for myself. Only two dollars and a half." Agnes'
+allowance had been recently increased half a dollar by the observant
+lawyer.
+
+"All of us can help," said Ruth. "Boys and girls alike, as well as grown
+people. The schools ought to do something to raise money for the
+hospital's support."
+
+"Like a fair, maybe--or a bazaar," cried Agnes, eagerly. "That ought to
+be fun."
+
+"You are always looking for fun," said Ruth.
+
+"I don't care. If we can combine business with pleasure, so much the
+better," laughed Agnes. "It's easier to do things that are amusing than
+those that are dead serious."
+
+"There you go!" sighed Ruth. "You are becoming the slangiest girl. I
+believe you get it all from Neale O'Neil."
+
+"Poor Neale!" sniffed Agnes, regretfully. "He gets blamed for all my
+sins and his own, too. If I had a wooden arm, Ruth, you'd say I caught
+it of him, you detest boys so."
+
+Part of this conversation between her older sisters must have made a
+deep impression on Tess Kenway's mind. She went forth as an apostle for
+the Women's and Children's Hospital, and for Mrs. Eland in particular.
+She said to Mr. Stetson, their groceryman, the next morning, with
+profound gravity:
+
+"Do you know, Mr. Stetson, that the Women's and Children's Hospital has
+got to be closed?"
+
+"Why, no, Tess--is that so?" he said, staring at her. "What for?"
+
+"Because there is no money to pay Mrs. Eland. And now she won't have any
+home."
+
+"Mrs. Eland?"
+
+"The matron, you know. And she's such a nice lady," pursued Tess. "She
+taught me the sovereigns of England."
+
+Mr. Stetson might have laughed. He was frequently vastly amused by the
+queer sayings and doings of the two youngest Corner House girls, as he
+often told his wife and Myra. But on this occasion Tess was so serious
+that to laugh at her would have hurt her feelings. Mr. Stetson expressed
+his regret regarding the calamity which had overtaken Mrs. Eland and the
+hospital. He had never thought of the institution before, and said to
+his wife that he supposed they "might spare a trifle toward such a good
+cause."
+
+Tess carried her tale of woe into another part of the town when she and
+Dot went with their dolls to call on Mrs. Kranz and Maria Maroni, on
+Meadow Street, where the Stower tenement property was located.
+
+"Did you know about the Women's and Children's Hospital being shut up,
+Mrs. Kranz?" Tess asked that huge woman, who kept the neatest and
+cleanest of delicatessen and grocery stores possible. "And Mrs. Eland
+can't stay there."
+
+"Ach! you dond't tell me!" exclaimed the German woman. "Ist dodt so? And
+vor vy do dey close de hospital yedt? Aind't it a goot vun?"
+
+"I think it must be a very good one," Tess said soberly, "for Mrs. Eland
+is an awfully nice lady, and she is the matron. She taught me the
+sovereigns of England. I'll recite them for you." This she proceeded to
+do.
+
+"Very goot! very goot!" announced Mrs. Kranz. "Maria can't say that
+yedt."
+
+Maria Maroni, the very pretty Italian girl (she was about Agnes' age)
+who helped Mrs. Kranz in the store, laughed good-naturedly. "I guess I
+knew them once," she said. "But I have forgotten. I never like any
+history but 'Merican history, and that of Italy."
+
+"Ach! you foreigners are all alike," Mrs. Kranz protested, considering
+herself a bred-in-the-bone American, having lived in the country so
+long.
+
+Although she was scolding her brisk and pretty little assistant most of
+the time, she really loved Maria Maroni very dearly. Maria's mother and
+father--with their fast growing family--lived in the cellar of the same
+building in which was Mrs. Kranz's shop. Joe Maroni, as was shown by the
+home-made sign at the cellar door, sold
+
+    ISE COLE WOOD VGERTABLS
+
+and was a smiling, voluble Italian, in a velveteen suit and cap, with
+gold rings in his ears, who never set his bright, black eyes upon one of
+the Corner House girls but he immediately filled a basket with his
+choicest fruit as a gift for "da leetla padrona," as he called Ruth
+Kenway. He had an offering ready for Tess and Dot to take home when they
+reappeared from Mrs. Kranz's back parlor.
+
+"Oh, thank you, Mr. Maroni," Tess said, while Dot allowed one of the
+smaller Maronis to hold the Alice-doll for a blissful minute. "I know
+Ruthie will be delighted."
+
+"Si! si! _dee_-lighted!" exclaimed Joe, showing all his very white teeth
+under his brigand's mustache. "The leetla T'eressa ees seek?"
+
+"Oh, no, Mr. Maroni!" denied Tess, with a sigh. "I am very well. But I
+feel very bad in my mind. They are going to close the Women's and
+Children's Hospital and my friend, Mrs. Eland, who is the matron, will
+have no place to go."
+
+Joe looked a little puzzled, for although Maria and some of her brothers
+and sisters went to school, their father did not understand or speak
+English very well. Tess patiently explained about the good work the
+hospital did and why Mrs. Eland was in danger of losing her position.
+
+"Too bad-a! si! si!" ejaculated the sympathetic Italian. "We mak-a da
+good mon' now. We geev somet'ing to da hospital for da poor leetla
+children--_si! si!_"
+
+"Oh, will you, Mr. Maroni?" cried Tess. "Ruth says there ought to be a
+fund started for the hospital. I'll tell her you'll give to it."
+
+"Sure! you tell-a leetla padrona. Joe geeve--sure!"
+
+"Oh, Dot! we can int'rest lots of folks--just as Ruth said," Tess
+declared, as the two little girls wended their way homeward. "We'll talk
+to everybody we know about the hospital and Mrs. Eland."
+
+To this end Tess even opened the subject with Uncle Rufus' daughter,
+Petunia Blossom, who chanced to be at the old Corner House when Tess and
+Dot arrived, delivering the clothes which she washed each week for the
+Kenways.
+
+Petunia Blossom was an immensely fat negress--and most awfully black.
+Uncle Rufus often said: "How come Pechunia so brack is de mysteriest
+mystery dat evah was. She done favah none o' ma folkses, nor her
+mammy's. She harks back t' some ol' antsistah dat was suttenly mighty
+brack--yaas'm!"
+
+"I dunno as I kin spar' anyt'ing fo' dis hospital, honey," Petunia said,
+seriously, when Tess broached the subject. "It's a-costin' me a lot t'
+keep up ma dues wid de Daughters of Miriam."
+
+"What's the Daughters of Miriam, Petunia?" asked Agnes, who chanced to
+overhear this conversation on the back porch. "Is it a lodge?"
+
+"Hit's mo' dan a lodge, Miss Aggie," proclaimed Petunia, with pride.
+"It's a beneficial ordah--yaas'm!"
+
+"And what benefit do you derive from it?" queried Agnes.
+
+"Why, I doesn't git nottin' f'om it yet awhile, honey," said Petunia,
+unctiously. "But w'en I's daid, I gits one hunderd an' fifty dollahs.
+Same time, dey's 'bleeged t' tend ma funeral."
+
+"Dat brack woman suah is a flickaty female," grumbled Uncle Rufus, when
+he heard Agnes repeating the story of Petunia's "benefit" to the family
+at dinner that night. When nobody but the immediate family was present
+at table, Uncle Rufus assumed the privilege of discussing matters with
+the girls. "She's allus wastin' her money on sech things. Dere, she has
+got t' die t' git her benefit out'n dem Daughters of Miriam. She's
+mighty flickaty."
+
+"What does 'flickaty' mean, Uncle Rufus, if you please?" asked Dot,
+hearing a new word, and rather liking the sound of it.
+
+"Why, chile, dat jes' mean _flickaty_--das all," returned the old
+butler, chuckling. "Dah ain't nottin' in de langwidge what kin explanify
+dat wo'd. Nor dah ain't no woman, brack or w'ite, mo' flickaty dan dat
+same Pechunia Blossom."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE STONE IN THE POOL
+
+
+"Great oaks from little acorns grow." Tess Kenway, with her little,
+serious effort, had no idea what she was starting for the benefit of
+Mrs. Eland, and incidentally for the neglected Women's and Children's
+Hospital. And this benefit was not of the unpractical character for
+which Petunia Blossom was paying premiums into the treasury of the
+Daughters of Miriam!
+
+Tess' advertisement, wherever she went, of the hospital's need, called
+the attention of many heretofore thoughtless people to it. Through Mr.
+Stetson and Mrs. Kranz many people were reminded of the institution that
+had already done such good work. They said, "It would be a shame to
+close that hospital. Something ought to be done about it."
+
+Tess Kenway's word was like a stone dropped into a placid pool. The
+water stirred by the plunge of the stone spreads in wavelets in an ever
+widening circle till it compasses the entire pool. So with the little
+Corner House girl's earnest speech regarding the hospital's need of
+funds.
+
+Tess and Dot did not see the woman in the gray cloak again--not just
+then, at least; but they thought about her a great deal, and talked
+about her, too. A bag of the pippins went to the hospital by Neale
+O'Neil's friendly hand, addressed to Mrs. Eland, and with the names of
+the two youngest Corner House girls inside.
+
+"I do hope she likes apples," Tess said. "I'm _so_ much obliged to her
+for the sovereigns of England."
+
+Tess wondered, too, if she should take some of the apples to school that
+first day of the fall term to present to Miss Pepperill. Dot took _her_
+teacher some. Dot was to have the same teacher this term that she had
+had the last. Tess finally decided that the sharp and red-haired Miss
+Pepperill might think that she, Tess, was trying to bribe her to forget
+the sovereigns of England.
+
+"And I am quite sure I know them perfectly. That is, if she doesn't fuss
+me too much when she asks the question," Tess said to Ruth, with whom
+she discussed the point. "I won't take her the apples, I guess, until
+after I have recited the sovereigns."
+
+Despite the declaration that she had learned perfectly the rhyme Mrs.
+Eland had written out for her, Tess Kenway went into school that first
+day of the term feeling very sober indeed. Many of the girls in her
+class looked sober, too. Pupils who had graduated from Miss Pepperill's
+class had reported the red-haired lady as being "awfully strict."
+
+Indeed, before the scholars were quite settled at their desks, they had
+a proof of Miss Pepperill's discipline. Some of the boys in Tess' class
+had reputations to maintain (or thought they had) for "not bein' scart
+of teacher." Sammy Pinkney often boasted to wondering and wide-eyed
+little girls that "no old teacher could make him a fraid cat."
+
+"What's your name--you with the black hair and warts on your hands?"
+demanded the new teacher, sharply and suddenly.
+
+She pointed directly at the grinning and inattentive Sammy. There was no
+mistaking Miss Pepperill's meaning and some of the other boys giggled,
+for Sammy did have warts on his grimy little paws.
+
+"What's your name?" repeated the teacher, with rising inflection.
+
+"Sam--Sam Pinkney," replied Sammy, just a little startled, but trying to
+appear brave.
+
+"Stand up when you reply to a question!" snapped Miss Pepperill.
+
+Sammy stumbled to his feet.
+
+"Now! What is your name? Again."
+
+"Sam Pinkney."
+
+"Sam-u-e-l?"
+
+"Well--that's 'Sam,' ain't it?" drawled the boy, gaining courage.
+
+But he never spoke so again when Miss Pepperill addressed him. That
+woman strode down the aisle to Sammy's seat, seized the cringing boy by
+the lobe of his right ear, and marched him up to her desk. There she
+sat him down "in the seat of penitence" beside her own chair, saying:
+
+"I'll attend to your case later, young man. Evidently the long vacation
+has done you no good. You have forgotten how to speak to your teacher."
+
+The girls were much disturbed by this manifestation of the new teacher's
+sternness. Sadie Goronofsky whispered to Tess:
+
+"Oh! don't she get excited easy?"
+
+The whites of Alfredia Blossom's eyes were fairly enlarged by her
+surprise and terror at this proceeding on the new teacher's part. After
+that, Alfredia jumped every time Miss Pepperill spoke.
+
+Miss Pepperill noted none of this cringing terror on the part of her new
+pupils. Or else she was used to it. She marched up and down the aisles,
+seating and reseating the pupils until she had them arranged to her
+satisfaction, and suddenly she pounced on Tess.
+
+"Ah!" she said, stopping before the Corner House girl's desk. "You are
+Theresa Kenway?"
+
+Tess arose before replying. "Yes, ma'am," she said.
+
+"Ah! Didn't I give you a question to answer this first day?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," replied Tess, trying to speak calmly.
+
+Miss Pepperill evidently expected to find Tess at fault. "What was the
+question, Theresa?" she asked.
+
+"You told me to be prepared to recite for you the succession of the
+sovereigns of England."
+
+"Well, are you prepared?" snapped Miss Pepperill.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," Tess said waveringly. "I learned them in a rhyme, Miss
+Pepperill. It was the only way I could remember them all--and in the
+proper succession. May I recite them that way?"
+
+"Let me hear the rhyme," commanded the teacher.
+
+Tess began in a shaking voice, but as she progressed she gained
+confidence in the sound of her own voice, and, knowing the rhyme
+perfectly, she came through the ordeal well.
+
+"Who taught you that, Theresa?" demanded Miss Pepperill, not unkindly.
+
+"Mrs. Eland wrote it down for me. She said she learned it so when she
+was a little girl. At least, all but the last four lines. She said
+_they_ were 'riginal."
+
+"Ah! I should say they were," said Miss Pepperill. "And who is Mrs.
+Eland?"
+
+"Mrs. Eland is an awfully nice lady," Tess said eagerly, accepting the
+opening the teacher unwittingly gave her. "She is matron of the Women's
+and Children's Hospital, and do you _know_, they say they are going to
+close the hospital because there aren't enough funds, and poor Mrs.
+Eland won't have any place to go. We think it's dreadful and, Miss
+Pepperill,----"
+
+"Well, well!" interposed Miss Pepperill, with a grim smile, "that will
+do now, Theresa. I have heard all about that. I fancy you must be the
+little girl who is going around telling everybody about it. I heard Mr.
+Marks speak this morning about the needs of the Women's and Children's
+Hospital.
+
+"We'll excuse your further remarks on that subject, Theresa. But you
+recited the succession of the English sovereigns very well indeed. I,
+too, learned that rhyme when I was a little girl."
+
+Tess thought the bespectacled teacher said this last rather more
+sympathetically. She felt rebuked, however, and tried to keep a watch on
+her tongue thereafter in Miss Pepperill's presence.
+
+At least, she felt that she had comported herself well with the rhyme,
+and settled back into her seat with a feeling of thankfulness.
+
+Miss Pepperill's mention of Mr. Marks' observation before the teachers
+regarding the little girl who was preaching the gospel of help for the
+hospital, made no impression at all on Tess Kenway's mind. She had no
+idea that she had made so many grown people think of the institution's
+needs.
+
+Before the high school classes early in that first week of school, the
+principal incorporated in his welcoming remarks something of importance
+regarding this very thing.
+
+"We open school this term with quite a novel proposal before us. It has
+not yet been sanctioned by the Board of Education, although I
+understand that that body is soon to have it under advisement. In
+several towns of Milton's size and importance, there were last winter
+presented spectacles and musical plays, mainly by the pupils of the
+public schools of the several towns, and always for worthy charitable
+objects.
+
+"The benefit to be gained by the schools in general and by the pupils
+that took part in the plays in particular, looked very doubtful to me at
+a distance; but this summer I made it my business to examine into the
+results of such appearances in musical pieces by pupils of other
+schools. I find it develops their dramatic instinct and an appreciation
+of music and acting. It gives vent, too, to the natural desire of young
+people to dance and sing, and to 'act out' a pleasant story, while they
+are really helping a worthy work of charity.
+
+"One of the most successful of these school plays is called _The
+Carnation Countess_. It is a play with music which lends itself to
+brilliant costuming, spectacular scenery, and offers many minor parts
+which can easily be filled by you young people. A small company of
+professional players and singers carry the principal parts in _The
+Carnation Countess_; but if we are allowed to take up the production of
+this play--say in holiday week--I promise you that every one who feels
+the desire to do so, may have a part in it.
+
+"The matter is all unsettled at present. But it is something to think
+of. Besides, a very small girl, I understand, a pupil in our grammar
+grade, is preaching a crusade for Milton's Women's and Children's
+Hospital. Inspired or not, that child has, during the past few days,
+awakened many people of this town to their duty towards that very
+estimable institution.
+
+"The Women's and Children's Hospital is poor. It needs funds. Indeed, it
+is about to be closed for lack of sufficient means to pay salaries and
+buy supplies. The _Post_ has several times tried to awaken public
+interest in the institution, but to no avail.
+
+"Now, this child, as I have said, has done more than the public press.
+And quite unconsciously, I have no doubt.
+
+"This is the way great things are often done. The seed timidly sown
+often brings forth the abundant crop. The stone thrown into the middle
+of the pool starts a wave that reaches the very shore.
+
+"However, if we act the play for the charity proposed or not, there is a
+matter somewhat connected with it," continued the principal, his face
+clouding for a moment, "that I am obliged to bring to your attention. Of
+course, it is understood that only the pupils who do their work
+satisfactorily to their immediate instructors, will have any share in
+the production of the play.
+
+"This rule, I am sorry to say, will affect certain members of our
+athletic teams who, I find, have been anything but correct in their
+behavior. I shall take this serious matter up in a few days with the
+culprits in question. At present I will only say that the basket ball
+match set for next Saturday with the team from the Kenyon school, will
+be forfeited. All the members, I understand, of our first basket ball
+team are equally guilty of misbehavior at a time when they were on
+honor.
+
+"I will see the members of the team in my office after the second
+session to-day. You are dismissed to your classes, young ladies and
+gentlemen."
+
+The blow had fallen! Agnes was so amazed and troubled that she failed to
+connect Mr. Marks' observations about the child who was arousing Milton
+to its duty towards the Women's and Children's Hospital, with her own
+little sister, Tess.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JUST OUT OF REACH
+
+
+Ruth Kenway, however, realized that it was Tess who was the instrument
+which was being used in arousing public interest in the Women's and
+Children's Hospital--and likewise in Mrs. Eland, who had given five
+years of faithful work to the institution.
+
+She was particularly impressed on this very afternoon, when poor Agnes
+was journeying toward Mr. Marks' office with her fellow-culprits of the
+basket ball team, with Tess' preachment of the need of money for the
+hospital. Ruth came home from school to find Mr. Howbridge waiting for
+her in the sitting room with Tess, who had arrived some time before,
+entertaining him.
+
+As the door was open into the hall, Ruth heard the murmur of their
+voices while she was still upstairs at her toilet-table; so when she
+tripped lightly down the broad front stairs it was not eavesdropping if
+she continued to listen to her very earnest little sister and the
+lawyer.
+
+"But just supposing Uncle Peter _had_ been 'approached,' as you say, for
+money for that hospital--and s'pose he knew just how nice Mrs. Eland
+was--don't you think he would have left them some in his will, Mr.
+Howbridge?"
+
+"Can't say I do, my dear--considering what I know about Mr. Peter
+Stower," said the lawyer, drily.
+
+"Well," sighed Tess, "I do wish he had met my Mrs. Eland! I am sure he
+would have been int'rested in her."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"Oh, yes! For she is the very nicest lady you ever saw, Mr. Howbridge.
+And I _do_ think you might let us give some of the money to the hospital
+that Uncle Peter forgot to give--if he had been reminded, of course."
+
+"That child should enter my profession when she grows up," said Mr.
+Howbridge to Ruth, when Tess had been excused. "She'll split hairs in
+argument even now. What's started her off on this hospital business?"
+
+Ruth told him. She told, too, what Tess did each month with her own pin
+money, and the next allowance day Tess was surprised to find an extra
+half dollar in her envelope.
+
+"Oh--ee!" she cried. "Now I _can_ give something to the hospital fund,
+can't I, Ruthie?"
+
+Meanwhile, Agnes, with Eva Larry, Myra Stetson, and others of her
+closest friends (Agnes had a number of bosom chums) waited solemnly in
+Mr. Marks' office. More than the basket ball team was present in anxious
+waiting for the principal's appearance.
+
+"Where's Trix Severn?" demanded Eva in a whisper of the other girls.
+"She ought to be in this."
+
+"In what?" demanded another girl, trying to play the part of innocence.
+
+"Ah-yah!" sneered Eva, very inelegantly. "As though you didn't know what
+it is all about!"
+
+"Well, I'm sure I don't," snapped this girl. "Mr. Marks sent for me. I
+don't belong to your old basket ball team."
+
+"No. But you were with us on that car last May," said Agnes, sharply,
+"You know what we're all called here for."
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"If you weren't told so publicly as we were to come here, you'll find
+that he knows all about your being in it," said Eva.
+
+"And that will amount to the same thing in the end, Mary Breeze,"
+groaned Agnes.
+
+"I don't know at all what you are talking about," cried Miss Breeze,
+tossing her head, and trying to bolster up her own waning courage.
+
+"If you don't know now, you'll never learn, Mary," laughed Myra Stetson.
+"We are all in the same boat."
+
+"You bet we are!" added the slangy Eva.
+
+"Every girl here was on that car that day coming from Fleeting,"
+announced Agnes, after a moment, having counted noses. "You were in the
+crowd, Mary."
+
+"What day coming from Fleeting?" snapped the girl, who tried to
+"bluff," as Neale O'Neil would have termed it.
+
+"The time the car broke down," cried another. "Oh, I remember!"
+
+"Of course you do. So does Mary," Eva said. "We were all in it."
+
+"And, oh, weren't those berries good!" whispered Myra, ecstatically.
+
+"Well, I don't care!" said Mary Breeze, "you started it, Aggie Kenway."
+
+"I know it," admitted Agnes, hopelessly.
+
+"But nobody tied you hand and foot and dragged you into that farmer's
+strawberry patch--so now, Mary!" cried Eva Larry. "You needn't try to
+creep out of it."
+
+"Say! Trix seems to be creeping out of it," drawled Myra. "Don't you
+s'pose Mr. Marks has heard that she was in the party?"
+
+"Sh!" said Agnes, suddenly. "Here he comes."
+
+The principal came in, stepping in his usual quick, nervous way. He was
+a small, plump man, with rosy cheeks, eyeglasses, and an ever present
+smile which sometimes masked a series of very sharp and biting remarks.
+On this occasion the smile covered but briefly the bitter words he had
+to say.
+
+"Young ladies! Your attention, please! My attention has been called to
+the fact that, on the twenty-third of last May--a Saturday--when our
+basket ball team played that of the Fleeting schools, you girls--all of
+you--on the way back from the game, were guilty of entering Mr. Robert
+Buckham's field at Ipswitch Curve, and appropriated to your own use, and
+without permission, a quantity--whether it be small or large--of
+strawberries growing in that field. The farmer himself furnishes me with
+the list of your names. I have not seen him personally as yet; but as
+Mr. Buckham has taken the pains to trace the culprits after all this
+time has elapsed he must consider the matter serious.
+
+"What particular punishment shall be meted out to you, I have not
+decided. As a general and lasting rebuke, however, I had thought of
+forfeiting all the games the team has already won in the county series,
+and refuse permission to you to play again this year. But by doing that
+the schools of Milton would be punished in total, for the athletic
+standing of all would be lowered.
+
+"Now I have considered a more equitable way of making you young ladies
+pay the penalty of that very unladylike and dishonest proceeding. If the
+Board of Education sanctions a production of _The Carnation Countess_ by
+the pupils of the Milton schools, all you young ladies will be debarred
+from taking any part whatever in the play.
+
+"I see very well," pursued Mr. Marks, "that you who were guilty of
+robbing Mr. Buckham are girls who would be quite sure of securing
+prominent parts in the play. You are debarred. That, at present, is all
+I shall say on this subject. If the farmer claims damages, that will be
+another matter."
+
+With his rosy face smiling and his eyeglasses sparkling, the principal
+dismissed the woeful party. They filed out of the office, very glum
+indeed. And Mary Breeze was more than a little inclined to blame Agnes.
+
+"I don't care! I took only a few berries myself," she complained. "And
+we none of us would have thought of going over that fence and raiding
+the strawberry patch if it hadn't been for Agnes."
+
+"Ah-yah!" repeated Eva, with scorn. "What's the use of saying that?
+Aggie may have been the first one over the fence; but we were all right
+after her. She may have a little the quickest mind in this crowd, but
+her limbs are no quicker."
+
+"And how about Trix?" murmured Myra Stetson. "How is it she has escaped
+the deluge?"
+
+That is what Neale O'Neil asked when he met Agnes just before she
+reached the old Corner House.
+
+"Oh, Aggie, how did you come out?" he asked soberly. "Was Mr. Marks just
+as hard on you as he could be?"
+
+"I think so," Agnes replied gravely. "We don't just know yet what he
+means to do. Only in part. But that part is just _awful_!"
+
+"Was the row about Buckham's berries?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I thought so. What's he going to do to you? Make you forfeit all the
+games?"
+
+"No. Maybe something worse than that."
+
+"Worse? What is it?" asked Neale, in wonder.
+
+"He says we none of us can act in that play he told about this morning."
+
+"Huh!" muttered the boy, eyeing Agnes' flushed face and tearful eyes in
+surprise. "Do you care?"
+
+"Oh, Neale! I _know_ I can act. I love it. I've always been crazy for
+it. And now, when there's maybe a chance, I am not--going--to--be--let!"
+
+"Goodness! do you really feel so bad about it, Aggie?"
+
+"I--I---- Why, my heart will be just _broken_ if I can't act in _The
+Carnation Countess_," sobbed the Corner House girl.
+
+"Oh, cricky! Don't turn on the sprinkler again, Aggie," begged Neale, in
+a panic.
+
+"I--I just can't help it! To think of there being a play acted in this
+town, and I might be in it!" wailed Agnes. "And now it's just out of my
+reach! It's too mean for anything, that's what it is!"
+
+She threatened to burst into another flood, and Neale tried to head the
+tears off by saying:
+
+"Don't cry again, Aggie. Oh, don't! If you won't cry I'll try to find
+some way of getting you out of the scrape."
+
+"You--you can't, Neale O'Neil!"
+
+"We--ell, I can try."
+
+"And I wouldn't want to get out of it myself unless the other girls
+escaped punishment, too."
+
+"You're a good little sport, Aggie. I always said so," Neale declared,
+admiringly. "Say, that reminds me!" he added, suddenly. "Were all the
+girls up before Mr. Marks?"
+
+"All who went over to Fleeting that day, do you mean?"
+
+"Yes. All that were in that car that broke down."
+
+"Why--yes--I think so."
+
+"Huh!" grunted Neale, thoughtfully.
+
+"All but one anyway."
+
+"Hullo! Who was that?"
+
+"The girl who wasn't in Mr. Marks' office?"
+
+"Yes. Who was missing of that bunch of berry raiders?" and Neale
+grinned.
+
+"Why--Trix," said Agnes, slowly.
+
+"Ah-ha! I smell a mouse!"
+
+"What do you mean by that, Neale O'Neil?" cried the girl.
+
+"Nothing significant in the fact that our festive Beatrice was not
+there?"
+
+"No. Why should there be?" demanded Agnes.
+
+"And who do you suppose furnished Mr. Marks with his information and the
+list of you girls' names?"
+
+"Oh, the farmer!"
+
+"Old Buckham?" cried Neale, startled.
+
+"Yes," said Agnes. "Mr. Marks said so."
+
+Neale looked both surprised and doubtful. "Then why didn't Buckham give
+in Trix's name, too?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know, Neale. No use in blaming her just because she was
+lucky enough to escape."
+
+"Oh, that's all right. I'll go to my Lady Beatrice, get down on my
+shin-bones, and beg her pardon, if I wrongfully suspect her," laughed
+Neale. "But, I say, Aggie! did Mr. Buckham come to see Mr. Marks about
+it? Did he say?"
+
+"No. I think Mr. Marks said the farmer wrote."
+
+"_Wrote?_" cried the boy. "Why, I don't believe Bob Buckham _can_ write.
+He's a smart enough old fellow, but he never had any schooling. He told
+me so. He's not a bad sort, either. He must have been awfully mad about
+those strawberries to hold a grudge so long as this. I worked for him a
+while, you know, Aggie."
+
+"Oh, so you did, Neale."
+
+"Yes. I don't believe he is the sort who would make so much trouble for
+a bunch of girls. Somebody must have egged him on," said Neale,
+gloomily.
+
+"There you go again, Neale," groaned Agnes. "Hinting at Beatrice
+Severn."
+
+"Well," grinned Neale, "you want me to help you out of your scrape,
+don't you?"
+
+"At nobody else's expense," said Agnes.
+
+"Don't know what to make of it," grumbled Neale. "It looks fishy to me.
+Mr. Buckham writing Mr. Marks! I'm going to find out about _that_. Keep
+up your pluck, Aggie. I'll see what can be done," and Neale, with his
+cap on the back of his flaxen head and his hands in his pockets, went
+off whistling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CORE OF THE APPLE
+
+
+Dot Kenway came home a day or two after this, quite full of her first
+"easy lessons in physiology." It always seemed to Dot that when she
+learned a new fact it was the very first time it had ever been learned
+by anybody.
+
+"Dot is just like a hen," Neale O'Neil said, chuckling. "She gets hold
+of a thing and you'd think nobody ever knew it before she did. She is
+the original discoverer of every fact that gets into her little noddle."
+
+"But how does that make her like a hen?" demanded Ruth.
+
+"Why, a hen lays an egg, and then gets so excited about it and makes
+such a racket, that you'd think that was the first egg that had been
+laid since the world began."
+
+"What is all this you learned, Dottie?" demanded Neale, as they all sat
+around the study lamp; for Neale was often at the old Corner House with
+his books in the evening. He and Agnes were in the same grade.
+
+"Oh, Neale! did you know you had a spinal cord?" demanded the smallest
+Corner House girl.
+
+"No! you don't tell me? Where is it?" asked the boy, quite soberly.
+
+"Why," explained the literal Dot, "it's a string that runs from the back
+of your head to the bottom of your heels."
+
+At the shout of laughter that welcomed this intelligence, Tess said,
+comfortingly:
+
+"Don't mind, Dot. That isn't half as bad as what Sammy Pinkney said to
+Miss Pepperill the other day. She asked us which was the most important
+to keep clean, your face or your teeth, and Sammy shouted: 'Your teeth,
+teacher, 'cause they can rot off and your face can't.'"
+
+"And I guess that awful Miss Pepperpot punished him for that," suggested
+Dot, awed.
+
+"Yes. Sammy is always getting punished," said Tess. "He never _does_
+manage to say the right thing. And I think Miss Pepperill is kind of
+hard on him. But--but she's real nice to me."
+
+"Well, why shouldn't she be, honey?" Ruth said. "You're not to be
+compared with that rude boy, I am sure," for Ruth Kenway did not much
+approve of boys, and only tolerated Neale O'Neil because the other
+children liked him so much.
+
+"I should hope not!" agreed Agnes, who did like boys, but did not like
+the aforesaid scapegrace, Sammy Pinkney.
+
+"I guess it was the sovereigns of England that makes her nice to me,"
+said Tess, thoughtfully. "I 'spected to have an awfully hard time in
+Miss Pepperill's class; but she has never been real cross with me. And
+what do you s'pose?"
+
+"I couldn't guess," Ruth said smilingly.
+
+"To-day she asked me about Mrs. Eland."
+
+"Mrs. Eland?"
+
+"Yes," said Tess, nodding. "She asked me if I'd seen Mrs. Eland lately,
+and if she'd found her sister. For you see," explained Tess, "I'd told
+her how poor Mrs. Eland felt so bad about losing her sister when she was
+a little girl and never being able to find her."
+
+"Oh, yes, I remember," Ruth said.
+
+"But I had to tell Miss Pepperill that I'd only seen her the one
+time--when she taught me the sovereigns of England. I'd really love to
+see Mrs. Eland once more. Wouldn't you, Dot?"
+
+"Dear me, yes!" agreed the smaller girl. "I wonder if she ever got those
+apples?"
+
+"Of course she did," put in Neale. "Didn't I tell you I took them to the
+hospital myself?"
+
+"We--ell! But she never told us so--did she, Dot?" complained Tess.
+
+However, the very next day the children heard from the bag of apples. A
+delightfully suspicious package awaited Tess and Dot at the old Corner
+House after school. It had been delivered by no less a person than Dr.
+Forsyth himself, who stopped his electric runabout in front of the old
+Corner House long enough to run in and set the pasteboard box on the
+sitting room table.
+
+"What forever is that, Doctor?" demanded Mrs. MacCall.
+
+"I hope it's something to make these children sick," declared the
+doctor, gruffly. "They are too disgracefully healthy for anything."
+
+"Yes, thank our stars!" said the housekeeper.
+
+"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" cried the apparently very savage medical man. "But
+what would become of all us poor doctors if everybody were as healthy as
+this family, I'd like to know?" and he tramped out to his car again in
+much make-believe wrath.
+
+Dot came first from school and was shown the box. It was only about six
+inches square and it had a card tied to it addressed to both her and
+Tess. Dot eyed it with the roundest of round eyes, when she heard who
+had brought it.
+
+"Why don't you open it, child?" demanded Aunt Sarah, who chanced to be
+downstairs. "Bring it here and I'll snip the string for you with my
+scissors."
+
+"Oh! I couldn't, Aunt Sarah!" Dot declared.
+
+"Why not, I should admire to know?" snapped the old lady. "It's not too
+heavy for you to carry, I should hope?"
+
+"Oh, no, ma'am. But I can't open it till Tess comes," said Dot.
+
+"Why not, I should admire to know?" repeated Aunt Sarah, in her jerky
+way.
+
+"Why, it wouldn't be fair," said the smallest Corner House girl,
+gravely.
+
+"Huh!" snorted the old lady.
+
+"Tess wouldn't do that to me," Dot said, with assurance.
+
+Agnes chanced to get home next. "What ever do you s'pose is in it,
+Dottums?" she cried. "There's no name on it except yours and Tess'. And
+the doctor brought it!"
+
+"Yes. But I know it isn't pills," declared Dot, seriously.
+
+"How do you know that?" laughed Agnes.
+
+"The box is too big," was the prompt reply. "He brings pills in just the
+_cunningest_ little boxes."
+
+"Maybe it's charlotte russe," suggested Agnes. "They put them in boxes
+like this at the bakery."
+
+"Oh! do you think so?" gasped Dot, scarcely able to contain herself.
+
+"If they are charlotte rushings," chuckled Neale, who had brought home
+Agnes' books for her, "be careful and not be so piggish as the country
+boy who ate the pasteboard containers as well as the cake and cream of
+the charlotte russe. He said he liked them fine, only the crust was
+tough."
+
+"Mercy!" ejaculated Agnes. "That's like a boy."
+
+"I _do_ hope Tess comes pretty quick!" murmured Dot. "I--I'm just about
+going crazy!"
+
+Tess came finally; but at first she was so excited by something that had
+happened in school that she could not listen to Dot's pleading that she
+should "come and look at the box."
+
+Of course, Sammy Pinkney was in difficulties with the teacher again. And
+Tess could not see for once why he should be punished.
+
+"I'm sure," she said earnestly, "Sammy did his best. And I brought the
+composition he wrote home for you to see, Ruthie. Sammy dropped it out
+of his book and I will give it to him to-morrow.
+
+"But Miss Pepperill acted just like she thought Sammy had misbehaved
+himself. She said she hoped she hadn't a 'humorist in embryo' in her
+class. What did she mean by that, Ruthie? What's a humorist in embryo!"
+
+"A sprouting funny man," said Agnes, laughing. "Maybe Sammy Pinkney will
+grow up to write for the funny columns in the newspapers."
+
+"Let us see the paper, Tess," said Ruth. "Maybe that will explain just
+what Miss Pepperill meant."
+
+"And poor Sammy's got to stay after school for a week," said Tess,
+sympathetically, producing a much smudged and wrinkled sheet of
+composition paper.
+
+"_Do_ come and see the box!" wailed Dot.
+
+Tess went with her smaller sister then, leaving Ruth to read aloud for
+the delight of the rest of the family Sammy Pinkney's composition on
+
+    "THE DUCK
+
+    "The duck is a low heavyset bird he is a mighty poor singer
+    having a coarse voice like crows only worse caused by getting to
+    many frogs in his neck. He is parshal to water and aks like hed
+    swallowed a toy balloon that keeps him from sinking the best he
+    can do is to sink his head straight down but his tail fethers is
+    always above water. Duks has only two legs and they is set so
+    far back on his running gears by Nachur that they come pretty
+    near missin' his body altogether. Some ducks when they get big
+    curls on their tails is called drakes and don't have to set or
+    hatch but just loaf and go swimming and eat ev'rything in sight
+    so if I had to be a duck I'd ruther be a drake. There toes are
+    set close together the web skin puts them in a poor way of
+    scratching but they have a wide bill for a spade and they walk
+    like they was tipsy. They bounce and bump from side to side and
+    if you scare them they flap there wings and try to make a pass
+    at singing which is pore work. That is all about ducks."
+
+"Do you suppose," cried Agnes in wonder, "that that boy doesn't know any
+better than that composition _sounds_?"
+
+"Evidently Miss Pepperill thinks he does," laughed Ruth. "But it _is_
+funny. I wonder what will happen to Sammy Pinkney when he grows up?"
+
+"The question is, what will happen to him before he grows up," chuckled
+Neale. "That kid is a public nuisance. I don't know but that the
+dog-catchers will get him yet."
+
+Meanwhile the two little girls had secured the paper box and opened it.
+Their squeals drew all the others to the sitting room. Inside the
+neatly wrapped box was a round object in silver and gold foil, and when
+this was carefully unwound, a big, splendid golden pippin lay on the
+table.
+
+"Why!" cried Dot, "it's one of our own apples."
+
+"It is surely off our pippin tree," agreed Agnes.
+
+"Who could have sent it?" Tess surmised. "And Dr. Forsyth brought it."
+
+"Bringing coals to Newcastle," chuckled Neale.
+
+But when Tess took up the apple, it broke in half. It had been cunningly
+cut through and through, and then the core scooped out, and the halves
+of the apple fastened together again.
+
+"Oo-ee!" squealed Dot again.
+
+For in the core of the apple was a wad of paper, and Tess spread this
+out on the table. It was a note and the reading of it delighted the two
+smaller girls immensely:
+
+    "My dear Lesser Half of the Corner House Quartette," it began.
+    "Your kindness in sending me the nice bag of apples has not been
+    overlooked. I wanted to come and see you, and thank you in
+    person; but my duties at present will not allow me to do so. We
+    are short-handed here at the Women's and Children's Hospital and
+    I can not spare the time for even an afternoon call.
+
+    "I would, however, dearly love to have you little girls, Theresa
+    and Dorothy, both come to call on me, and take tea, some
+    afternoon--the time to be set by your elder sister, Miss Ruth.
+    Ask her to write to me when you may come--on your way home from
+    school, if you like.
+
+    "Hoping I shall have the pleasure of entertaining you soon, I
+    am,
+
+    "Your loving and sincere friend,
+        "MARION ELAND."
+
+"I think that is just too sweet for anything of her," sighed Tess,
+ecstatically. "To call and take tea with her! Won't that be fine, Dot?"
+
+"Fine!" echoed Dot. She bit tentatively into her half of the apple which
+had contained the invitation. "This--this apple isn't hurt a mite,
+Tess," she added and immediately proceeded to eat it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LYCURGUS BILLET'S EAGLE BAIT
+
+
+Ruth set the day--and an early one--for Tess and Dot to take tea with
+their new friend, Mrs. Eland. She wrote a very nice note in reply to
+that found in the core of the apple, and the little girls looked forward
+with delight to seeing the matron of the Woman's and Children's
+Hospital.
+
+But before the afternoon in question arrived something occurred in which
+all the Corner House girls had a part, and Neale O'Neil as well; and it
+was an adventure not soon to be forgotten by any of them. Incidentally,
+Tom Jonah was in it too.
+
+Ruth tried, on pleasant Saturdays, to invent some game or play that all
+could have a part in. This kept the four sisters together, and it was
+seldom that any Corner House girl found real pleasure away from the
+others. Ruth's only cross was that Agnes would drag Neale O'Neil into
+their good times.
+
+Not that Ruth had anything against the white-haired boy. In spite of the
+fact that Neale was brought up in a circus--his uncle was Mr. Bill
+Sorber of Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie--he was
+quite the nicest boy the Corner House girls knew. But Ruth did not
+approve of boys at all; and she thought Agnes rude and slangy enough at
+times without having her so much in the company of a real boy like
+Neale.
+
+She suggested a drive into the country for this late September Saturday,
+chestnuts being their main object, there having been a sharp frost. Of
+course Neale had to arrange for the hiring of the livery team, and the
+stableman refused to let them have a spirited span of horses unless
+Neale drove.
+
+"Well, get an automobile then!" exclaimed Agnes. "It's only three
+dollars an hour, with a man to drive, at Acton's garage. Goodness knows
+I'm just _crazy_ to ride in an auto--one of those big, beautiful
+seven-passenger touring cars. I wish we could have one, Ruthie!"
+
+"I wish we could," said Ruth, for she, too, was automobile hungry like
+the rest of the world.
+
+"Do! _do!_ ask Mr. Howbridge," begged Agnes.
+
+"Not for the world," returned Ruth, decidedly. "He'd think we were
+crazy, indeed. There is money enough to educate us, and clothe and feed
+us; but I do not believe that Uncle Peter's estate will stand the drain
+of automobiles--no indeed!"
+
+"Well," sighed Agnes. "We're lucky to have Neale about. You know very
+well if it were not for him the livery man would give us a pair of
+dead-and-alive old things. Mr. Skinner knows Neale is to be trusted with
+any horse in his stable."
+
+This was true enough; but it added Neale O'Neil to the party. When they
+were about to depart from the old Corner House there was another
+unexpected member added to the company.
+
+Tess and Dot were squeezed in beside Neale on the front seat. Ruth and
+Agnes occupied the back of the carriage with wraps and boxes and baskets
+of eatables. This was to be an all day outing with a picnic dinner in
+the chestnut woods.
+
+"All aboard?" queried Neale, flourishing the whip. "Got everything?
+Haven't left anything good to eat behind, have you?"
+
+"Oh, you boys!" groaned Ruth. "Always thinking of your stomachs."
+
+"Well! why were stomachs put in front of us, if not to be thought of and
+considered?" Neale demanded. "If not, they might as well have been stuck
+on behind like a knapsack, or like our shoulder-blades.
+
+"I say, Mrs. MacCall," proceeded the irrepressible boy. "Plenty of baked
+beans and fishcakes for supper to-night. I see very plainly that these
+girls have brought very little to eat along of a solid character. I
+shall be hungry when we get back."
+
+At that moment Tess cried: "Oh, poor Tom Jonah!" And Dot echoed her:
+"Poor Tom Jonah!"
+
+"Look how eager he is!" cried Agnes.
+
+The big dog stood at the gate. Old as he was, the idea of an outing
+pleased him immensely. He was always delighted to go picnicking with the
+Corner House girls; but as the legend on his collar proclaimed, Tom
+Jonah was a gentleman, and nobody had invited him to go on this
+occasion.
+
+"Oh, Ruth! let him come!" cried the three younger girls in chorus.
+
+"Why not?" added Agnes.
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Ruth.
+
+"It will be a long march for him," said Neale, doubtfully. "He'll get
+left behind. The horses are fast."
+
+"Well, you are the one to see that he isn't left behind, Neale O'Neil,"
+asserted Ruth.
+
+"All right," said the boy, meekly, but winking at Uncle Rufus and Mrs.
+MacCall. Neale had wanted the old dog to go all the time, and his remark
+had turned the scale in Tom Jonah's favor.
+
+"Come, boy! you can go, too," Ruth announced as the horses started.
+
+Tom Jonah uttered a joyful bark, circled the carriage and pair two or
+three times in the exuberance of his delight, and then settled down to a
+steady pace under the rear axle. Neale saw to it that the lively ponies
+did not travel too fast for the old dog.
+
+The carriage rattled across Main Street and out High Street. The town
+was soon left behind, Neale following the automobile road along which
+ran the interurban electric tracks to Fleeting and beyond.
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Agnes, gloomily. "I know this is the way to Fleeting,
+Neale O'Neil. Wish I'd never been there."
+
+"Has Mr. Marks ever said anything further to you girls about Bob
+Buckham's strawberries?" asked her boy friend.
+
+"No. But you see, we haven't played any more outside games, either. And
+I _know_ they'll give _The Carnation Countess_ this winter and we won't
+any of us be allowed to play in it."
+
+"I'm going to be a bee," announced Dot, seriously, "if they have the
+play. I'll have wings and a buzzer."
+
+"A buzzer?" demanded Tess. "What's that?"
+
+"Well, bees buzz, don't they? If they make bees out of us, as teacher
+says they will, we'll have to buzz, won't we? We're learning a buzzing
+song now."
+
+"Goodness! and you'll be provided with a stinger, too, I suppose!"
+exclaimed Agnes.
+
+"Oh! we shall be tame bees," Dot said. "Not at all wild. The song says
+so.
+
+    "'We are little honey-bees,
+        Honey sweet our disposition.
+      We appear here now to please,
+        Making sweets our avocation.
+          Buzz! buzz! buzz-z-z-z!'
+
+That's a verse," concluded Dot.
+
+"Miss Pepperill," observed Tess, sadly, "said only yesterday that if we
+were in the play at all we might act the part of imps better than
+anything else. It would come natural to us."
+
+"Poor Miss Pepperpot!" laughed Agnes. "She must find your class a great
+cross, Tess. How's Sammy standing just now?"
+
+"He hasn't done anything to get her very mad since he wrote about the
+duck," Tess said gravely. "But Sadie Goronofsky got a black mark
+yesterday. And Miss Pepperill laughed, too."
+
+"What for?" asked Ruth.
+
+"Why, teacher asked why Belle Littleweed hadn't been at school for two
+days and Alfredia Blossom told her she guessed Belle's father was dead.
+He was 'spected to die, you know."
+
+"Well, what about Sadie?" asked Agnes, for Tess seemed to have lost the
+thread of her story.
+
+"Why, Sadie speaks up and says: 'Teacher, I don't believe Mr. Littleweed
+is dead at all. I see their clothes on the line and they was all
+white--nightgowns and all.'"
+
+"The idea!" giggled Agnes.
+
+"That's what Miss Pepperill said. She asked Sadie if she thought folks
+wore black nightgowns when they went into mourning, and Sadie says: 'Why
+not, teacher? Don't they feel just as bad at night as they do in the
+daytime?' So then Miss Pepperill said Sadie ought not to ask such silly
+questions, and she gave her a black mark. But I saw her laughing behind
+her spectacles!"
+
+"My! but Tess is the observant kid," said Neale, laughing. "She laughed
+behind her spectacles, did she?"
+
+"Yes. I know when she laughs, no matter how cross her voice sounds,"
+declared Tess, confidently. "If you look right through her spectacles
+you'll see her eyes jumping. But I guess she's afraid to let us all see
+that she feels pleasant."
+
+"She's afraid to spoil her discipline, I suppose," said Ruth. "But if
+ever I teach school I hope I can govern my scholars by making them love
+me--not through fear."
+
+"Why, of course they'll all fall in love with you, Ruthie!" cried Agnes,
+with assurance. "Who wouldn't? But that old Pepperpot is another
+proposition."
+
+"Perhaps she is a whole lot better than she appears," Ruth said mildly.
+"And I don't think we ought to call her 'Pepperpot.' Tess certainly has
+found her blind side."
+
+"Ah, of course! Tess is like you," rejoined Agnes. "She would disarm a
+wild tiger."
+
+"Oh! oh!" cried Neale, hearing this remark--and certainly what Agnes
+said was wilder than any tiger! "How would you go to work to disarm a
+tiger, Aggie? Never knew they had arms."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Smartie!"
+
+"I don't know how smart I am," said Neale. "I was setting here
+thinking----"
+
+"You mean you were _sitting_," snapped Agnes. "You're neither a hen nor
+a mason."
+
+"Huh! who said I was?" asked Neale.
+
+"Why," returned the girl, "a hen _sets_ on eggs, and a mason _sets_ the
+stone in a wall, for instance. You _sit_ on that seat, I should hope."
+
+"Oh, cricky! Get ap, Dobbin and Dewlap! What do you know about Aggie's
+turning critic all of a sudden?" cried Neale.
+
+"Alas for our learning!" chuckled Ruth. "A hen _sets_ only in colloquial
+language. To a purist she always _sits_--according to my English lesson
+of yesterday.
+
+"But you'd better see where you are turning to, young man," she went on,
+briskly. "Isn't yonder the road to Lycurgus Billet's place? He owns the
+chestnut woods."
+
+"We can go that way if you like," admitted Neale. "But I want to come
+around by the Ipswitch Curve on the interurban, either going or coming."
+
+"What for?" asked Ruth, while Agnes cried:
+
+"Oh, don't Neale! I never want to see that horrid place again."
+
+"I just want to," said Neale to Ruth. "Mr. Bob Buckham lives near there
+and I worked for him once."
+
+Until Neale's uncle, Mr. William Sorber, had undertaken to pay for the
+boy's education, Neale had earned his own living after he had run away
+from the circus.
+
+"Oh, don't, Neale!" begged Agnes, faintly.
+
+"Why shouldn't we drive back that way?" asked Ruth, surprised at her
+sister's manner and words. Ruth did not know all about Agnes' trouble
+over the raid on the farmer's strawberry patch. "But let's drive direct
+to the chestnut woods now."
+
+"All right," said Neale, turning the horses. "Go 'lang! We'll have to
+stop at Billet's house and ask permission. He is choice of his woods,
+for there's a lot of nice young timber there and the blight has not
+struck the trees. He's awfully afraid of fire."
+
+"Isn't that Mr. Billet rather an odd stick?" asked Ruth. "You know, we
+never were up this way but once. We saw him then. He was lying under a
+wall with his gun, watching for a chicken hawk. His wife said he'd been
+there all day, since early in the morning. _She_ was chopping wood to
+heat her water for tea," added Ruth with a sniff.
+
+Neale chuckled. "Lycurgus ought to have been called 'Nimrod,'" he said.
+
+"Why?" demanded Agnes.
+
+"Because he is a mighty hunter. And that is really all he does take any
+interest in. I bet he'd lie out under a stone wall for a week if he
+thought he could get a shot at a snowbird! And he'd shoot it, too, if he
+had half a chance. He never misses, they say."
+
+"Such shiftlessness!" sniffed Ruth again. "And his wife barefooted and
+his children in rags and tatters."
+
+"That girl was a bright-looking girl," Agnes interposed. "You know--the
+one with the flour-sack waist on. Oh, Neale!" she added, giggling, "you
+could read in faint red marking, 'Somebody's XXXX Flour,' right across
+the small of her back!"
+
+"Poor child," sighed Ruth. "That was Sue--wasn't that her name? Sue
+Billet."
+
+"A scrawny little one with a tip-tilted nose, and running bare-legged,
+though she must be twelve," said Neale. "I remember her."
+
+"Poor child," Ruth said again.
+
+There were other things to arouse the oldest Corner House girl's
+sympathy about the Billet premises when the picnicking party arrived
+there. Two lean hounds first of all charged out from under the house to
+attack Tom Jonah.
+
+"Oh!" cried Dot. "Stop them! They'll eat poor Tom Jonah up, they are so
+hungry."
+
+Tess, too, was somewhat disturbed, for the hounds seemed as savage as
+bears. Tom Jonah, although slow to wrath, knew well how to acquit
+himself in battle. He snapped once at each of the hounds, and they fled,
+yelping.
+
+"And serves 'em just right!" declared Agnes. "Oh! here comes Mrs.
+Lycurgus."
+
+A slatternly woman in a soiled wrapper, men's shoes on her stockingless
+feet and her black, stringy hair hanging down her back, came from around
+the corner of the ramshackle, tumble-down house.
+
+"Why--ya'as; I reckon so. You ain't folks that'll build fires in our
+woodlot an' leave 'em careless like. Lycurgus, he's gone up that a-way
+hisself. There's a big eagle been seed up there, an' he's a notion he
+might shoot it. Mebbe there's a pair on 'em. He wants ter git it,
+powerful. Sue, she's gone with her pap. But I reckon you know the way?"
+
+"Oh, yes, ma'am," said Neale. Then, after he had driven on a few yards,
+he said to the girls: "Say! wouldn't it be great to catch sight of that
+eagle?"
+
+"An eagle?" repeated Agnes, in doubt. "Do you suppose there really is an
+eagle so near to civilization?"
+
+"You don't call Mrs. Lycurgus really civilized?" chuckled Neale. "And
+the Billets and Bob Buckham are the nearest neighbors for some miles to
+his eagleship, in all probability."
+
+"I suppose it is lonely up here," admitted Ruth.
+
+"This is a hilly country. There are plenty of wild spots back on the
+high ground, within a very few miles of this spot, where eagles might
+nest."
+
+"An eagle's eyrie!" said Agnes, musingly. "And maybe eaglets in it."
+
+"Like Mrs. Severn wears on her hat," said Dot, suddenly breaking in.
+
+"What! Eaglets on her hat?" cried Agnes.
+
+"Eaglets to trim hats with?" chuckled Neale. "That is a new style, for
+fair."
+
+"Oh, dear me," said Ruth, with a sigh. "The child means aigrets. Though
+I am sorry if Mrs. Severn is cruel enough to follow such a fashion.
+That's a different kind of bird, honey."
+
+"Anyway, there will not be young eagles at this time of year, I guess,"
+Neale added.
+
+"How would we ever climb up to an eyrie?" Tess asked. "They are in very
+inaccessible places."
+
+"As inac--accessible," asked Dot, stumbling over the big word, "as Mrs.
+MacCall's highest preserve shelf?"
+
+"Quite," laughed Ruth.
+
+The road through which they now drove was really "woodsy." The leaves
+were changing from green to gold, for the sap was receding into the
+boles and roots of the trees. The leaves seemed to be putting on their
+bravest colors as though to flout Jack Frost.
+
+Squirrels darted away, chattering and scolding, as the party advanced.
+These little fellows seemed to suspect that the woods were to be raided
+and some of the nuts, which they considered their own lawful plunder,
+taken away.
+
+The Corner House girls, with their boy friend, did indeed find a goodly
+store of nuts. They camped in a pretty glade, where there was a spring,
+and tethered the horses where they could crop some sweet clover. And
+Neale built a real Gypsy fire, being careful that it should do no
+damage; and three stout stakes were set up over the blaze, a pot hung
+from their apex, and the tea made.
+
+And the chestnuts! how they rained down when Neale climbed up the trees
+and swung himself out upon the branches, shaking them vigorously. The
+glossy brown nuts came out of their prickly nests in a hurry and were
+scattered widely on the leaf-carpeted ground.
+
+Sometimes they came down in the burrs--maybe only "peeping" out; and
+getting them wholly out of the burrs was not so pleasant an occupation.
+
+"Why is it," complained Dot sucking her fingers, stung by the prickly
+burrs, "that they put such thistles on these chestnuts? It's worse than
+a rosebush--or a pincushion. Couldn't the nuts grow just as good without
+such awfully sharp jackets on 'em?"
+
+"Oh, Dot," said Tess, to whom the smallest Corner House girl addressed
+this speech. "I suspect the burrs are made prickly for a very good
+reason. You see, the chestnuts are not really ripe until the burrs are
+broken open by the frost. Then the squirrels can get at them easily."
+
+"Well, I see _that_," agreed Dot.
+
+"But don't you see, if the little squirrels--the baby ones--could get at
+the chestnuts before they were ripe, they would all get sick, and have
+the stomach-ache--most likely be like children, boys 'specially, who eat
+green apples? You know how sick Sammy Pinkney was that time he got into
+our yard and stole the green apples."
+
+"Oh, I see," Dot acknowledged. "I s'pose you're right, Tess. But the
+burrs are dreadful. Seems to me they could have found something to put
+'round a chestnut besides just old prickles."
+
+"How'd they do it?" demanded Tess, rather exasperated at her sister's
+obstinacy. Besides, the "prickles" were stinging her poor fingers, too.
+"How do you suppose they could keep the little squirrels from eating the
+chestnuts green, then?"
+
+"We--ell," said Dot, thoughtfully, "they might do like our teacher says
+poison ought to be kept. She read us about how dangerous it is to have
+poison around--and I read some in the book about it, too."
+
+"But chestnuts aren't poison!" cried Tess.
+
+"They must be when they are green," declared the smaller girl,
+confidently, possessing just enough knowledge of her subject to make her
+positive. "Else the squirrels wouldn't have the stomach-ache. And you
+say they _do_."
+
+"I said they _might_," denied Tess, hastily.
+
+"Well, poison is a very dang'rous thing," went on Dot, pleased to air
+her knowledge. "It ought to be doctored at once and not allowed to run
+on--for _that's_ very ser'ous indeed. And we mustn't treat poison rough;
+it's li'ble to run into blood poison."
+
+"Oh!" gasped Tess, who had not had the benefits of "easy lessons in
+physiology" when she was in Dot's grade, that being a new study.
+
+"You ought to keep poison," went on Dot, nodding her dark little head
+vigorously, "in a little room under lock and key in a little bottle and
+the cork in so it can't get out, and hide the key and have a skeleton on
+the bottle and not let nobody go there!" and Dot came out, breathless
+but triumphant, with this complete and efficacious arrangement.
+
+The bigger girls had gathered a great heap of the brown nuts before the
+picnic dinner was served. Neale had done something beside shake down the
+nuts. He had stripped off great pieces of bark from the yellow birch
+trees and cut them into platters and plates on which the food could be
+served very nicely. Neale was so resourceful, indeed, that Ruth had to
+acknowledge that boys really were of some account, after all.
+
+When they sat down, Turk-fashion, around the tablecloth which had been
+spread, the oldest Corner House girl sighed, however: "But mercy! he
+eats his share. Where do you suppose he puts it all, Aggie?"
+
+"I wouldn't be unladylike enough to inquire," returned the roguish
+sister, with a toss of her head. "How dreadful you are, Ruth!"
+
+It was a very pleasant picnic. The crisp air was exhilarating; the dry
+leaves rustled every time the wind breathed on them; and the tinkle of
+the spring made pleasant music. Squirrels chattered noisily; jays
+shrieked their alarm; the lazy caw of a crow was heard from a distance.
+
+The tang of balsam was in the air and the fall haze looked blue and
+mysterious at the end of the aisles made by the rows of tall trees. It
+was after dinner that a seemingly well-beaten path attracted them, and
+the whole party, including Tom Jonah, started for a stroll.
+
+The path led them to an opening in the forest where a stake-and-rider
+fence was all that separated them from a great rolling pasture. In the
+distance were the craggy hills, where great boulders cropped out and the
+forest was thin and straggly.
+
+It was a narrow valley that lay before the young explorers. Directly
+opposite was a crag as barren as a bald head.
+
+"Look at the cloud shadow sailing over the field," said Ruth,
+contemplatively.
+
+Her remark might have passed without comment had not the shadow, thus
+mentioned, changed form and darted suddenly to one side.
+
+"Hi!" exclaimed Neale. "That's no cloud shadow."
+
+"Look! look!" squealed Tess. "See the aeroplane!"
+
+A flying machine had been exhibited at Milton only a few weeks before,
+and the aviator had done some fancy flying over the house-roofs of the
+town. Little wonder that Tess thought this must be another aeroplane,
+for the huge bird that swooped earthward cast a shadow quite as large as
+had the aeroplane she had seen.
+
+"The eagle!" exclaimed Neale. "Oh, look! look!"
+
+The whole party--even Tom Jonah--was transfixed with wonder as they
+observed a huge bird sail slowly across the valley toward them and
+finally alight upon a bare branch of a tall, dead pine at the edge of
+the field. There the eagle poised for a few moments, its wings half
+spread, "tip-tilting," as Agnes said, till he had struck the right
+balance. Then he settled more comfortably on his perch, turned his head
+till his harsh beak and evil eye were aimed over his shoulder, steadily
+viewing something in the field below him.
+
+The bird did not see the party of spectators at the boundary fence; but
+they quickly discovered the object which the bird of prey observed.
+
+"There! Oh, look there!" gasped Agnes. "_That thing's moving!_"
+
+"It's a girl!" murmured Ruth.
+
+"Sue Billet--as sure as you live," muttered Neale. "There's
+Lycurgus--over behind the fence--he's after the eagle!"
+
+"What a dreadful thing!" exclaimed Ruth, aloud. "Is he using his own
+child for bait! That's what he's doing! Oh, Neale! Oh, Agnes! He's sent
+that child out there to attract the eagle's attention," Ruth went on to
+cry. "What a wicked, wicked thing to do!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+BOB BUCKHAM TAKES A HAND
+
+
+Ruth's low cry was involuntary. She did not mean to frighten the little
+Corner House girls; but they saw and understood as well as the older
+spectators. Tess and Dot clung together and Dot began to whimper.
+
+"Oh, don't cry, Dot! Don't cry!" begged Tess.
+
+"That--that awful aigret!" gasped Dot, getting things mixed again, but
+quite as much frightened as though she were right. "It will bite that
+little girl."
+
+"No. We'll set Tom Jonah on him!" exclaimed Tess, bravely.
+
+"Hush!" exclaimed Neale, in a low, tense voice. "Lycurgus is going to
+shoot it."
+
+"Go right on, Sue!" they heard the hunter say to his little daughter, in
+a voice scarcely above a whisper, but very penetrating. "Walk right out
+in that there field. I got my eye on you."
+
+"You keep your eye on that ol' eagle, Pap--never mind watchin' me," was
+the faint reply of little Sue Billet.
+
+"Don't you have no fear," Lycurgus said in his sharp wheeze. "I'm
+a-gwine to shoot that fow-el. He's my meat."
+
+The eagle raised his wings slowly; they quivered and he stretched his
+neck around so that he could glare again at the trembling little girl.
+It was no wonder Sue was frightened, and stumbled, and fell into a bed
+of nettles, and then--screamed!
+
+"Drat the young 'un!" exclaimed Lycurgus, just as the eagle made an
+awkward spring into the air.
+
+But the bird did not fly away; instead it swooped around in a circle,
+displaying great strength and agility in its motion. It's wings spread
+all of six feet. They beat the air tremendously, and then the bird
+sailed low, aiming directly for the child just climbing out of the bed
+of nettles.
+
+It was plain that Lycurgus had not been quite ready for the eagle's
+swoop. He had to try for the bird, however. The screaming Sue could not
+extricate herself from the dangerous situation in which her father had
+placed her. Lycurgus shouldered his gun and pulled the trigger.
+
+He may have had a reputation for never missing his quarry; but his gun
+missed that time, for sure! Not a feather flew from the great bird. Its
+pinions beat the air so terribly that poor little Sue was thrown to the
+ground once more.
+
+Agnes shrieked. The two smaller girls were awestruck. Neale O'Neil
+fairly groaned. It seemed as though the child must fall a victim to the
+eagle's beak and claws.
+
+Its huge wings, beating the air, drowned most other sounds. Lycurgus
+struggled to slip another shell into his old-fashioned rifle. Somehow
+the mechanism had fouled.
+
+[Illustration: At the moment the eagle dropped with spread talons, the
+big dog leaped. Page 103]
+
+"Pap! Pap!" screeched the girl at last. "He's goin' to git me!"
+
+At that shrill and awful cry the man flung away his gun and leaped the
+rail fence into the open field. What he thought he might do with his
+bare hands against the talons and armed beak of the bird of prey, it
+would be impossible to say. But whatever fault might be found with
+Lycurgus Billet, he was no coward.
+
+Bare-handed, hatless, and as white as paper, the man ran toward his
+little girl. The shadow of the swooping eagle covered them both.
+
+Then it was that Tess Kenway awoke from her trance. She shrieked,
+suddenly: "Tom! Tom Jonah! Do, _do_ catch it! Tom Jonah! _Sic him,
+boy!_"
+
+The growling dog needed no second urging. He flung himself through the
+fence and dashed across the intervening space. At the moment the eagle
+dropped with spread talons, the big dog leaped.
+
+Tom Jonah's teeth gained a grip upon the bird's leg. The eagle screamed
+with pain and rage. Its wings beat the air mightily, and it rose several
+feet from the ground, carrying Tom Jonah with it!
+
+Lycurgus leaped in and seized Sue. With her clasped close to his chest
+he ran for the shelter of the woods.
+
+But the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil, with excited cries,
+followed in the wake of the lumbering eagle. It plowed across the field,
+rising and falling with alternate strokes of its wings. Tom Jonah seemed
+in a very precarious situation, indeed.
+
+The old dog had no idea of letting go his hold, however. When once his
+jaws were clamped upon an enemy, he was there to stay. Tess was wildly
+excited. Dot was crying frankly. Agnes called encouragement to Tom
+Jonah. Ruth and Neale were as anxious as the others for the safety of
+the old dog, but they saved their breath. All ran as hard as they could
+run after the eagle and Tom Jonah.
+
+For, scream and beat his wings as he might, the bird could not dislodge
+the dog. Half the time Tom Jonah was on the ground, and when he felt the
+earth he dragged back and tore at his feathered antagonist with an
+obstinacy remarkable.
+
+The eagle could not thrash Tom Jonah with his wings to any purpose; nor
+could he fix his talons in the dog, or spear him with his beak, while
+they both were in the air. As the huge bird sprang up the dog bounced
+into the air, too; but only for a moment or two at a time. The bird was
+growing weaker.
+
+Finally the eagle changed its tactics, and for a moment the two
+antagonists whirled over and over on the ground. How the feathers flew!
+In some way the bird's talons found the dog's flesh.
+
+It was then, when reckless Neale was trying to find a stone or club,
+that a hoarse voice was heard shouting:
+
+"Get away! stand back! I'm going to shoot that critter!"
+
+"Oh!" shrieked Tess Kenway, not at all the timid and mild little girl
+she usually was. "Oh! don't you dare shoot Tom Jonah!"
+
+There sounded the heavy explosion of a gun. The eagle screamed no more.
+Its great wings relaxed and it tumbled to the earth. Tom Jonah sprang
+away from the thrashing bird, which died hard. The man who had shot it
+strode in from the other side of the field.
+
+It was not Lycurgus Billet. It was an oldish man, with a big, bushy head
+of hair and whiskers. He carried his smoking gun in the hollow of his
+arm.
+
+"By cracky! I made a good shot that time, for a fact!" this stranger
+declared.
+
+But he was not a stranger to, at least, one of the picnic party. Neale
+O'Neil cried out: "Oh, Mr. Buckham, that was a fine shot! And just in
+the nick of time."
+
+Agnes almost fell over at this exclamation of her boy friend. She clung
+to Neale's jacket sleeve, whispering:
+
+"Oh, dear me! Let's not speak to him! Come, Neale! let's run. I--I am
+_so_ ashamed about those strawberries."
+
+"Step on that furderinest wing, young feller," said the big, old man to
+Neale. "He's dead--jest as dead as though he'd laid there a year. He's
+jest a-kickin' like a old rooster with his head off. Don't _know_ he's
+dead, that's all. Step on that wing; it'll keep him from thrashin'
+hisself to pieces," added the farmer, as Neale O'Neil obeyed him.
+
+The girls looked on in awe. Tom Jonah stood by, panting, his tongue out
+and his plume waving proudly.
+
+"That's a great dog," said Mr. Bob Buckham.
+
+"And---- Why, hullo, son! you used to work for us, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Buckham," replied Neale.
+
+"Ho, ho!" shouted the bushy-headed old man, spying Lycurgus and Sue
+coming from the edge of the woods. "I beat ye to it that time, Lycurgus.
+And what was little Sissy doing out there where the old eagle could git
+his eye on her? I swow! if it hadn't been for the dog, mebbe the eagle
+would ha' pecked her some--eh?"
+
+"The eagle would have carried her off--the poor little thing," said
+Ruth, indignantly.
+
+"No!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham.
+
+"I believe it would, sir," Neale said.
+
+"And that isn't the worst of it," went on the wrought up Corner House
+girl.
+
+"What ain't the worst of it, miss?" asked the farmer.
+
+"That poor little thing was sent out there by her father to attract the
+eagle."
+
+"What?" roared Bob Buckham, his great face turning red with anger and
+his deep-set eyes flashing. "You mean to tell me he set little Sissy for
+eagle bait?"
+
+He strode forward to meet Lycurgus Billet, leaving the dead bird behind
+him. The chagrined hunter smiled a sickly smile as big Bob Buckham
+approached.
+
+"The old gun went back on me that time--she sure did, Bob," Billet said.
+"I would ha' got that critter, else. Hullo! what's the matter?"
+
+For the farmer reached out a ham-like hand and seized the wiry Lycurgus
+by the shoulder, and shook him.
+
+"Hey! what you doin'?" the smaller man repeated.
+
+"I've a mind to shake the liver-lights out'n you, Lycurgus Billet!"
+declared the farmer. "To send little Sissy out to be eagle bait fer ye!
+I--I--That's the worst I ever heard of!"
+
+"Say!" sputtered Lycurgus. "What d'ye mean? I 'spected ter shoot the
+critter, didn't I?"
+
+"But ye didn't."
+
+"Just the same she warn't hurt. Air you, Sue?" demanded the little
+girl's father.
+
+Sue shook her head. She hadn't got over her scare, however. "My!" she
+confessed, "I thought he was a-goin' to grab me--I sure did! And he had
+sech a wicked eye."
+
+"You hear that?" demanded old Bob Buckham, fiercely, and Lycurgus shrank
+away from the indignant farmer as though he expected to feel the heavy
+hand again--and to sterner purpose this time.
+
+"You ain't no business with a young'un like Sissy--you ornery pup!"
+growled the old man in the culprit's ear. "I wish she was mine. You
+ain't fitten to own little Sissy."
+
+It was evident that the old farmer thought a good deal of the backwoods'
+child. Lycurgus said no further word. He walked over to the eagle and
+looked down at it.
+
+"He's a whopper!" he observed, smiling in his weak way at the Corner
+House girls and Neale O'Neil.
+
+Ruth only nodded coolly. Agnes turned her back on him, while the little
+girls stared as wonderingly at Lycurgus Billet as they would had he been
+a creature from another world.
+
+Bob Buckham and little Sissy, as he called her, were having a talk at
+one side. Something that shone brightly passed from the farmer's hand
+into the child's grimed palm.
+
+"Come on, Pap!" said Sue, bruskly. "Let's go home. These folks don't
+want us here."
+
+"Lazy, shiftless, inconsequential critter," growled Bob Buckham, coming
+back to the dead eagle, as Lycurgus and his daughter moved slowly away
+across the field.
+
+But then the old man's face cleared up quickly, though he sighed as he
+spoke.
+
+"That only goes to show ye! Some folks never have no chick nor child
+and others has got 'em so plentiful that they kin afford ter use 'em for
+eagle bait."
+
+His lips took a humorous twist at the corners, his eyes sparkled, and
+altogether his bewhiskered countenance took on a very pleasant
+expression. The Corner House girls--at least, Ruth and Tess and
+Dorothy--began to like the old farmer right away.
+
+"Got to take that critter home," declared Mr. Bob Buckham, as
+enthusiastic as a boy over his good luck. "Don't know how I come to lug
+my old gun along to-day when I started down this way. I never amounted
+to much as a hunter before. Always have left that to fellers like
+Lycurgus."
+
+"It was very fortunate for that poor little Sue that you had your
+rifle," Ruth said warmly.
+
+"Oh, no, ma'am," returned Mr. Buckham. "It was that dog of yourn saved
+little Sissy. But I reckon I saved the dog."
+
+"And we're awfully much obliged to you for _that_, sir," spoke up Tess.
+"Aren't we, Dot?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" agreed the smallest Corner House girl. "I thought poor Tom
+Jonah was going to be carried right up in the air, and that the aigrets
+would eat him!"
+
+"The _what_ would eat him?" demanded the farmer, paying close attention
+to what the little girls said, but puzzled enough at Dot's "association
+of ideas."
+
+Tess explained. "She means the young eagles. She expects the nest is
+full of hungry little eagles. It would have been dreadful for Tom Jonah
+to have been carried off just like a lamb. I've seen a picture of an
+eagle carrying away a lamb in his claws."
+
+"And many a one I reckon this big critter has stole," agreed the farmer.
+"Right out of my own flock, perhaps. But your dog was too big a load for
+him."
+
+"Now, son," he added, briskly to Neale, "you give me a h'ist with the
+bird. I'm going to take him home across my shoulders. Don't dare leave
+him here for fear some varmint will git him. I'll send the carcass right
+to town and have it stuffed." "Goodness!" murmured the startled Tess.
+"You don't _eat_ eagles, do you, sir?"
+
+"Ho, ho!" laughed the farmer. "No-sir-ree-sir! I mean we'll have the
+skin stuffed. When Mr. Eagle is mounted, you'll see him looking down
+from the top of that old corner cupboard of mine in the sittin'
+room--you remember it, Neale?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Neale, as he helped lift the heavy bird to the farmer's
+shoulders.
+
+"What are you and these young ladies doin' around here to-day, Neale?"
+asked Mr. Buckham.
+
+Neale told him. "Got a team, have you?" said the farmer. "Then drive
+right around to the house. You know the way, boy. I wanter git better
+acquainted with these little gals," and he smiled broadly upon Tess and
+Dot.
+
+Ruth was doubtful. Agnes shook her head behind the old man's back and
+pouted "No!"
+
+"I see that dog's ear is torn," went on Mr. Buckham. "I wanter doctor it
+a bit. These eagle's talons may be pizen as nightshade."
+
+So Ruth politely thanked Mr. Bob Buckham and said they would drive to
+his house. So near was the farmhouse, indeed, that Tess and Dot begged
+to walk with the farmer and so be assured that Tom Jonah should have
+"medical attention" immediately. Of course, the old dog would not leave
+the children to go with the strange man alone.
+
+"We can open the gates, too, for Mr. Buckham," said Tess.
+
+"Run along, then, children," the eldest sister said. "We will soon drive
+over with the chestnuts." Then she added rather sharply, but under her
+breath, to Agnes: "I don't see what your objection is to going to Mr.
+Buckham's house. I think he is a real nice old man."
+
+"Oh, I know he is," wailed her sister. "But you never stole his
+berries!"
+
+"Aggie's conscience is troubling her," chuckled Neale O'Neil. "But don't
+you fret, Aggie. Old Bob Buckham won't know that _you_ were one of the
+raiders last May."
+
+"Of course he will. When he knows my name. Didn't he send my name to Mr.
+Marks with the others?"
+
+"Did he?" returned Neale. "I wonder!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SOMETHING ABOUT OLD TIMES
+
+
+By the time Tess and Dot Kenway arrived at the rambling old farmhouse at
+Ipswitch Curve, where Mr. Buckham lived, they were as chatty and chummy
+with the man who had shot the eagle as though he were a life-long
+friend.
+
+Without any doubt Mr. Bob Buckham loved children--little girls
+especially. And Mrs. Bob Buckham loved them, too.
+
+There was a big-armed, broad-shouldered country girl in the wide, clean
+kitchen into which the children were first ushered. She was the
+maid-of-all-work, and she welcomed Tess and Dot kindly, if she did scold
+Mr. Buckham for tracking up her recently scrubbed floor with his muddy
+boots.
+
+"Now, you jest hesh, Posy," he told her, good-naturedly. "You know you
+wouldn't have work enough to keep you interested, if 'twarn't for me.
+Where's marm?"
+
+"In the sittin' room, Mr. Buckham--and don't you darst to go in there
+without scrapin' your feet. And _do_ put that nasty, great bird down
+outside."
+
+"Don't darst to," said Mr. Buckham. "The dogs'll tear it to pieces. I
+wanter fix this Tom Jonah's ear. He's a brave dog, Posy. If it hadn't
+been for him, I swow! Lycurgus Billet's Sue would have been kerried off
+by this old eagle," and he told the wondering girl about the adventure.
+
+"Now, you take these little gals in to marm, while I fix up Tom Jonah,"
+Mr. Buckham urged.
+
+So Tess and Dot were ushered into the sitting room by the big girl,
+Posy. Mrs. Buckham was not likely to be found anywhere but in her chair,
+poor woman, as the children very soon learned. She was a gentle,
+gray-haired, becapped old lady who never left her chair, saving for her
+bed at night. She was a paralytic and could not walk at all; but her
+fingers were busy, and she was fairly surrounded by bright colored
+worsteds and wools, finished pieces of knitting and crocheting, and
+incompleted work of like character.
+
+Out of this hedge of bright-hued fancy-work, Mrs. Buckham smiled upon
+the smaller Corner House girls quite as warmly as did Mr. Buckham
+himself.
+
+"I do declare! this is a pleasure," she cried, drawing one little girl
+after the other to her to be kissed. "Little flower faces! Aren't they,
+Posy? Wish I had a garden full o' them--that I do!"
+
+"My mercy, Mrs. Buckham! I'm glad you ain't," laughed the maid. "Not if
+they all favored Mr. Buckham and brought as much mud in on their feet as
+he does."
+
+"Never mind, Posy," cried the very jolly invalid. "_I_ don't track up
+your clean floors--and that's a blessing, isn't it?"
+
+Dot looked rather askance at the bright-colored afghan that hid the
+crippled legs of the good woman. The legs were so still, and the afghan
+covered them so completely, that to the little girl's mind it seemed as
+though she had no lower limbs at all!
+
+She and Tess, however, were soon quite friendly with the invalid. Posy
+bustled about between kitchen and sitting room, laying a round table in
+the latter room for tea for the expected guests. Mr. Buckham, having
+scraped his boots, came in.
+
+"Well, how be ye, Marm?" he asked his wife, kissing her as though he had
+just returned from a long journey.
+
+"Just the same, Bob," she replied, laughing. "I ain't been fur from my
+chair since you was gone."
+
+Mr. Buckham chuckled hugely at this old pleasantry between them. They
+both seemed to accept her affliction as though it were a joke, or a
+matter of small importance. Yet Mrs. Buckham had been confined to her
+chair and her bed for twenty years.
+
+Before Ruth and Agnes, with Neale O'Neil, reached the farmhouse, driving
+over from Lycurgus Billet's chestnut woods, Tess and Dot were having a
+most delightful visit. Dot was amusing Mrs. Buckham with her chatter,
+and likewise holding a hank of yarn for the invalid to wind off in a
+ball; while Tess, of course, had got upon her favorite topic of
+conversation, and was telling Mr. Buckham all about the need of the
+Women's and Children's Hospital, and about Mrs. Eland.
+
+"You see, she's such an awfully nice lady--and so pretty," said Tess,
+warmly. "It would be an awful thing if she had to go away--and she
+hasn't any place to go. But the hospital's _got_ to have money!"
+
+"Eland--Eland?" repeated Mr. Bob Buckham, reflectively. "Isn't that name
+sort o' familiar, Marm?" he asked his wife.
+
+"The Aden girl married an Eland," said Mrs. Buckham, quickly. "He died
+soon after and left her a widow. Is it the same? Marion Aden?"
+
+"Mrs. Eland's name is Marion," said Tess, confidently. "She signed it to
+a note to us. Didn't she, Dot?"
+
+"In the apple," replied Dot, promptly.
+
+"What does the child mean--'in the apple'?" queried the laughing Mrs.
+Buckham.
+
+"That's how she sent us our invitation to her party," said Dot.
+
+"Only to an afternoon tea, child!" exclaimed Tess, quickly. "That isn't
+a party." Then she explained to Mrs. Buckham about the apples and the
+one that came back with the note inside. Meanwhile the farmer was very
+quiet and thoughtful.
+
+"So," finished Tess, breathlessly, "we're going to stop at the hospital
+on our way home from school next Monday afternoon. Aren't we, Dot?"
+
+"Ye-es," said the smaller girl, this time doubtfully. "If Mrs. MacCall
+finishes my Alice-doll's new cloak. Otherwise she can't go, and of
+course I can't go without her. She hasn't a thing fit to wear, now it's
+come fall."
+
+"You ask Mrs. Eland," broke in Mr. Buckham, "if she happens to be any
+relation to Lemuel Aden."
+
+"Now, Bob!" said his wife in an admonitory undertone, "never mind raking
+up dead and gone happenings."
+
+"But I'm just curious--just curious," said the farmer. "Nothing to be
+done now about it----"
+
+"Bob!"
+
+"Well," subsided the farmer, "a man can't help thinkin' about money that
+he's lost. And that five hundred dollars was stole from us as sure as
+you're alive to-day, Marm."
+
+"Never mind," his wife said lightly. "You've earned several five
+hundreds since that happened--you know you have, Bob Buckham. What's the
+good of worrying?"
+
+"Ain't worrying," denied the farmer, quickly. "But I do despise a thief.
+I was brought up on the motter:
+
+    "''Tis a sin
+      To steal a pin;
+      'Tis a greater
+      To steal a' 'tater!'
+
+Ain't that so, children?" he concluded, chuckling.
+
+Now, Ruth and Agnes were being ushered into the room by the broadly
+smiling Posy just as Mr. Buckham recited this old jingle. Agnes flushed
+to the roots of her hair, and then paled with alarm. She expected, then
+and there, to be accused with the heinous offence of having picked
+strawberries without permission in Mr. Bob Buckham's field!
+
+"Oh! what a pretty girl!" cried the invalid. "Come here, my dear, and
+let me pinch those cheeks. You need not blush so; I'm sure you've been
+told you were pretty before--and I hope it hasn't spoiled you," and Mrs.
+Buckham laughed heartily.
+
+"I should know you were little Theresa's sister," continued the lady, as
+Agnes tremblingly approached. "She will be just such another when she
+gets to be as old as you, I am sure.
+
+"And of course, this is Ruth," and she welcomed the oldest Corner House
+girl, too. "Four such splendid girls must make their mother's heart
+glad."
+
+"I hope we did make her glad when she was with us," Ruth said quietly.
+"But we have no mother now; and no father."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" cried the invalid, in quite a shocked tone. "I had no
+idea----"
+
+"We miss our mother and our father. Even Dot can remember them both,"
+said Ruth, still calmly. "But it happened so long ago that we do not cry
+about it any more--do we, girls?"
+
+As the oldest sister spoke, the other three seemed to be involuntarily
+drawn to her. Dot took one hand and snuggled it against her soft, dark
+cheek. Tess put both arms about Ruth's neck and warmly kissed her. Agnes
+already had her arm around her elder sister's waist.
+
+"I see," said Mrs. Buckham, with sudden appreciation. "The others do not
+miss the lost and gone mother, for a very good reason. I am sure you
+have done your duty, Ruth Kenway."
+
+"I have tried to," Ruth said simply. "And they have all been good
+children, and helped."
+
+"I ain't a doubt of it--I ain't a doubt of it," repeated Mrs. Buckham,
+briskly.
+
+Agnes was watching the changing expression of the old lady's face,
+wondering if--as Neale had said--Mr. Buckham could not write, the
+invalid had sent in the list of girls' names to the principal of the
+Milton High. The old farmer himself might be unlettered; but Mrs.
+Buckham, Agnes was sure, must have had some book education.
+
+Right at the invalid's hand, indeed, were two shelves fastened under the
+window sill, filled with books--mostly of a religious character. And
+their bindings showed frequent handling.
+
+Posy brought in the steaming tea urn. "Come on now, folks," said Mrs.
+Buckham. "I'm just a honin' for a cup of comfort. That's what I call it.
+Tea is my favorite tipple--and I expect I'm just as eager for it as a
+poor drunkard is after liquor. Dear me! I never could blame them that
+has the habit for drink. I love my cup of comfort too well."
+
+Posy was putting Tess and Dot into their chairs. The farmer awoke from
+his brown study, got up, stretched himself, and, with a smile, wheeled
+his wife's chair to the table.
+
+"There ye be, Marm," he said. "All right?"
+
+"All right, Bob," she assured him.
+
+"Yes," the farmer said, turning to the children with a broader smile,
+"you ask your friend, Mrs. Eland, if she's related to Lemuel Aden. Seems
+to me she is his brother Abe's darter. Lem was a sharper; but Abe was a
+right out an' out----"
+
+"Now, Bob!" interposed his wife. "That's all gone and done for."
+
+"Well, so 'tis, Marm. But I can't never forget it. I was a boy and my
+marm was a widder woman. The five hundred dollars was all we had--every
+cent we had in the world," he added, looking about at the interested
+faces of his visitors.
+
+"Abe Aden was a lawyer, or suthin' like that. He was a dabster at most
+things, includin' horse-tradin'. My father had put all the money he had
+in the world in Abe's hands, in some trade or other. We tried to git it
+back when father was kill't so sudden in the sawmill.
+
+"Just erbout then Abe got inter trouble in a horse-trade. He was a good
+deal of a Gyp--so 'twas said. He left everything in Lem's hands and
+skedaddled out West. But he didn't leave no five hundred dollars in
+Lem's hands for _us_--no, sir!" and the old man shook his head
+ruminatively.
+
+"No, sir. He likely got away with that five hundred to pay his fare, and
+so escaped jail."
+
+"You don't know that, Bob," said his wife, gravely.
+
+"No. I don't know it. But I know that my marm and I suffered all that
+winter because of losin' the five hundred. I was only a boy. I hadn't
+got my growth. She overworked because of that rascal's dishonesty, and
+it broke her down and killed her. I loved my marm," he added simply.
+
+"'Course you did--'course you did, Bob," said his wife, briskly. Then
+she smiled about at the tableful of young folk, and confessed: "He begun
+callin' _me_ 'marm,' like he did his mother, right away when we was
+married. She'd been dead since he was a little boy, and I considered it
+the sweetest compliment Bob could pay me. I've been 'marm' to him ever
+since."
+
+"You sure have," declared Mr. Buckham, stoutly. "But that ain't bringin'
+my poor old marm back--nor the five hundred dollars. We never did hear
+direct from Abe Aden; but by and by a leetle gal wandered back here to
+the neighborhood. Said she was Abe's darter. He and her mother was lost
+in a big fire in some Western city; and she'd lost her sister, too."
+
+"Poor child!" sighed the old lady. "You couldn't hold a grudge against
+the child, Bob."
+
+"Who says I done so?" demanded the farmer. "No, sir! I never even seed
+the child more'n once or twice. But I know her name was Marion. And I
+heard her tell her story. The Chicago fire was a nine days' wonder, and
+this fire the gal's parents were lost in, was much similar, I should
+say. She'd seen her father and mother and the house they lived in, all
+swept away together--in a moment, almost. She and her sister escaped,
+but were separated in the refugees' camp and she couldn't never find the
+other child again. This Marion was old enough to remember about her
+Uncle Lem, and where he used to live; so the Relief Committee sent her
+here--glad ter git rid of her on sech easy terms, I s'pose. But Lem Aden
+had drapped out o' sight before then, and none of us folks knowed where
+he'd gone to."
+
+"And that little girl was Mrs. Eland?" Ruth ventured to ask, for the
+farmer's remembrances of old times did not interest the little girls.
+Posy was heaping their plates with good things to eat. The picnic dinner
+in the woods had been forgotten.
+
+"Yes. I reckon so," Mr. Buckham said, in answer to Ruth's inquiry. "She
+was kep' to help by some good people around here--just as we took Posy,
+marm and me. The child drifted away later. She got some schoolin'. I
+guess she went to a hospital and l'arned to be a nurse. Then she married
+a man named Eland, but he was sickly. I dunno as she ever did see her
+Uncle Lem."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE STRAWBERRY MARK
+
+
+Agnes Kenway had never been so uncomfortable in her life as she was
+sitting at that pleasant tea-table, at which the invalid, Mrs. Buckham,
+presided. And for once her usually cheerful tongue was stilled.
+
+"What's the matter with Aggie?" asked Neale O'Neil. "Lost your tongue?"
+
+"I believe our pretty one is bashful," suggested Mrs. Buckham, smiling
+upon the next to the oldest Corner House girl.
+
+"Well, if she is, it's the first time," murmured Neale. But he said no
+more. Neale suddenly guessed what was troubling his girl friend, and had
+tact enough to keep his lips closed.
+
+Agnes was just as honest a girl at heart as ever breathed. She did not
+need the reminder of the farmer's old doggerel to keep her from touching
+that which was not hers.
+
+At the time when she had led the raid of the basket ball team and their
+friends upon Mr. Buckham's strawberry patch, she had been inspired by
+mere thoughtlessness and high spirits. The idea that she was
+trespassing--actually stealing--never entered her helter-skelter
+thoughts until afterward.
+
+The field was so large, there were so many berries, and she and her
+mates took so few, that it really did not seem like stealing to
+thoughtless Agnes--no, indeed! It was just a prank.
+
+And now to hear Bob Buckham express his horror of a thief!
+
+"And that's what I am!" thought the bitterly repentant Agnes. "No, not a
+thief _now_. But I was at the time I took those berries. I am awfully
+sorry that I did such a thing. I--I wish I could tell him so."
+
+That thought took fast hold upon the girl's mind. Her appreciation of
+the enormity of her offence had not been so great before--not even when
+Mr. Marks, the principal of the Milton High School, was talking so
+seriously to the girls about their frolic.
+
+Then she had felt mainly the keen disappointment the punishment for her
+wrong-doing had brought. Not to be allowed to take part in the play
+which she felt sure would be enacted by the pupils of the Milton schools
+for the benefit of the Women's and Children's Hospital was a bitter
+disappointment, and that thought filled her mind.
+
+Now she felt a different pang--far different. Shame for her act, and
+sorrow for the wrong she had done, bore Agnes' spirit down. Little
+wonder that she was all but dumb, and that her flowerlike face was
+overcast.
+
+Tea was over and Mr. Buckham drew his wife's wheel-chair back to its
+usual place by the window. The light was fading even there, and Ruth
+said that they must start for home.
+
+"Don't run away, sis," said the old farmer. "Marm and me don't have many
+visitors like you; an' we're glad to have ye."
+
+"I fear that Mrs. MacCall will be afraid for us if we remain away much
+after dark," Ruth said cheerfully. She had already explained about Mrs.
+MacCall and Aunt Sarah, and even about Uncle Rufus.
+
+"But we all have had such a nice time," Ruth added. "I know we shall
+only be too glad to come again."
+
+"That's a good word," declared the invalid. "You can't come too often."
+
+"Thank you," said Ruth. "If Neale will get the ponies ready----"
+
+"And while he's doin' so, I'll take a look at that dog's ear again,"
+said Mr. Buckham, cheerfully. "Wouldn't want nothin' bad to happen to
+such a brave dog as Tom Jonah."
+
+"He's layin' out behind my kitchen stove, and he behaves like a
+Christian," Posy declared.
+
+"He's a gentleman, Tom Jonah is," said Tess, proudly. "It says so on his
+collar," and she proceeded to tell the good-natured maid-of-all-work Tom
+Jonah's history--how he had first come to the old Corner House, and all
+that he had done, and how his old master had once unsuccessfully tried
+to win him back.
+
+"But he wouldn't leave us at all. Would he, Dot?" she concluded.
+
+"Of course not," said the smallest girl. "Why should he? Aren't we just
+as nice to him as we can be? And he sleeps in the kitchen when it's
+cold, for Mrs. MacCall says he's too old to take his chances out of
+doors these sharp nights."
+
+"That's very thoughtful of your Mrs. MacCall, I do allow," agreed the
+jolly invalid. "And do you suppose she will get your doll's cloak done
+in time for your call on Mrs. Eland?"
+
+"My Alice-doll's cloak? I do hope so," said Dot, with a sigh of anxiety.
+
+"Wouldn't you go to call on the lady without her, if the cloak shouldn't
+be done?" asked the farmer's wife, much amused.
+
+"Oh, no! I couldn't do that," said Dot, gravely. "You see, I promised
+her."
+
+"Who, Mrs. Eland?"
+
+"No, ma'am. My Alice-doll. I told her she should go with us. You see,"
+said the smallest Corner House girl, "she was with us when we made the
+acquaintance of Mrs. Eland--Tess and me. And my Alice-doll liked her
+just as well as Tess and me. So there you are!"
+
+"I see," agreed Mrs. Buckham, quite seriously. "You couldn't disappoint
+the child."
+
+"Oh, no indeed!" said Dot. "I wouldn't want to! You see--she's not very
+strong. She hasn't been since that time she was buried alive."
+
+"Buried alive!" gasped the lady in horror and surprise.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. With the dried apples."
+
+"Buried with dried apples?" repeated Mrs. Buckham, her wonder growing.
+"What for?"
+
+"It was a most awful cat's-triumph," said Dot, shaking her head, and
+very, very solemn, "and it makes my Alice-doll very nervous even to hear
+it talked about. If she were here I wouldn't mention it----"
+
+"What? _What_ did you say, child?" gasped Mrs. Buckham. "About a cat, I
+mean, my dear?"
+
+"She means 'catastrophe,'" said Tess, coming to the rescue. "I really
+wish, Dot Kenway, that you wouldn't use words that you can't use!"
+
+Mrs. Buckham's mellow laughter rang out and she hugged the smallest
+Corner House girl close to her side.
+
+"Never mind, honey," she said. "If you want to make up a new word, you
+shall--so there!"
+
+Meanwhile Agnes had followed the farmer out into the big kitchen. The
+old man sat in a low chair and pulled Tom Jonah tenderly between his
+huge knees, till the dog laid his muzzle in his lap, looking up at the
+man confidingly out of his big, brown eyes.
+
+Mr. Buckham had put on a pair of silver-bowed spectacles and had the
+salve-box in his hand. He laid the badly torn ear carefully upon his
+knee and began to apply the salve with a gentle, if calloused,
+forefinger.
+
+"This'll take the pizen out, old feller," said the farmer, crooningly.
+
+Tom Jonah whined, but did not move. The application of the salve hurt
+the dog, but he did not pull away from the man's hand.
+
+"He sure _is_ a gentleman, jest as the little gal says," chuckled Bob
+Buckham.
+
+He looked so kindly and humorously up at Agnes standing before him, that
+the troubled Corner House girl almost broke out into weeping. She
+gripped her fingers into her palms until the nails almost cut the tender
+flesh. Her heart swelled and the tears stung her eyelids when she winked
+them back. Agnes was a passionate, stormy-tempered child. This was a
+crisis in her young life. She had always been open and frank, but nobody
+will ever know what it cost her to blurt out her first words to Mr. Bob
+Buckham.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Buckham! do you _hate_ anybody who steals from you?"
+
+"Heh?" he said, startled by her vehemence. "Do I hate 'em?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Goodness me, gal! I hope not. I'm a communin' Christian in our church,
+an' I hope I don't have no hatred in my heart against none o' my
+fellermen. But I hate some things that poor, weak, human critters
+does--yes, ma'am! 'Specially some of the ornery things Bob Buckham's
+done."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Buckham! _you_ never stole," blurted out Agnes.
+
+"Ya-as I have. That's why I hate stealin' so, I reckon," said the
+farmer, slowly.
+
+"Not, really?" cried Agnes.
+
+"Yep. 'Twas a-many year ago. Marm and me had jest come on this farm. She
+was young an' spry then, God bless her! And it was well she was. Bob
+Buckham wouldn't never have owned the place and stacked up the few
+dollars he has in bank, if it hadn't been for her spryness.
+
+"I'd jest got my first strawberry patch inter bearin'----"
+
+"Oh! Strawberries!" gasped Agnes.
+
+"Ya-as'm. Them's what I've made most of my money on. I only had a small
+patch. They was fust-class berries--most on 'em. They packed well, and
+we had ter put 'em into round, covered, quart boxes to ship in them
+days. I got a repertation with the local shipper for havin' A-number-one
+fruit.
+
+"Wal! Marm an' me was mighty hard up. We was dependin' on the _re_-turns
+from the strawberry crop to pay mortgage, int'rest and taxes. And one
+end of the strawberry patch--the late end--had the meachinest lookin'
+berries ye ever seen."
+
+Old Bob chuckled at the remembrance. His gaze sought the firelight
+flashing through the bars of the grate of the big cookstove.
+
+"Wal!" he said. "That was a bad time. We needin' the money so, and the
+berry crop likely to be short of what we figgered. Them little old
+barries at that last end of the patch began to ripen up fast; but I see
+they wouldn't bring me no price at all--not if the shipper seed 'em.
+
+"'Course, he was buyin' from a score o' farmers ev'ry day. My boxes
+didn't have my name on 'em. They had his'n. He furnished the boxes and
+crates himself.
+
+"The devil tempted me," said Bob Buckham, solemnly, "and I fell for him.
+'Course we had always to 'deacon' the boxes--we was expected to. The top
+layer of berries had to be packed in careful, hulls down, so's to make a
+pretty showin'.
+
+"But I put a lot of them meachin' little berries at the bottom of each
+box and covered 'em with big, harnsome fruit. They looked like the best
+o' the crop. I knew my man would never question 'em. And it made a
+difference of ten dollars to me on that one load.
+
+"I done it," said the farmer, blowing a big sigh. "I done it with as
+little compunction as I ever done anything in my whole endurin' life."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Buckham! Didn't you think it was wicked?"
+
+"If I did," he said, with a grin, "it didn't spile my appetite. Not
+_then_. Not that day. I seen the carload shipped and never said a word.
+I went home. I eat my dinner just as hearty as ever and made
+preparations to work the next day's load the same way. Ye see, marm,
+_she_ didn't know a thing about it.
+
+"Wal!" continued the old man, "it come bed-time and we went to bed. I
+was allus a sound sleeper. Minute my head touched the husk piller, that
+minute I begun ter snore. I worked hard and I slept hard.
+
+"But--funny thing--I didn't git to sleep. No reason--'parently. Wasn't
+worried. I was kinder tickled at what I'd done, and the slick way I'd
+done it. I never had cheated before to my knowledge; but I was happy at
+the thought of that extry ten dollars, and the other extry money that
+was ter foller."
+
+"And--and didn't your conscience trouble you?" asked Agnes, wonderingly.
+
+"Nope, not a mite. I was jest as quiet and contented as though they'd
+left a conscience out o' me when I was built," and the old man chuckled
+again, heartily.
+
+"Marm says she believes more folks lay awake at night because of empty
+stomachs than from guilty consciences, an' so she always has a plate of
+crackers by her side o' the bed. Wal! I lay as calm as a spring mornin';
+but after a while I gotter countin' sheep jumpin' through a gap in a
+stone-fence, and had jest about lulled myself ter sleep, when seems ter
+me there was a hand writin' on the wall opposite the foot of our bed. I
+didn't see the hand, mind you; but I seen the writin'. It was in good,
+big print-text, too, or I couldn't have read it at all--for you know I
+never had no schoolin', an' I kin jest barely write my name to this day.
+
+"But that print showed up plain as plain! And it was jest one
+word--kinder 'luminated on the wall. It was _strawberry_. That's all,
+jest _strawberry_. You'd think it would ha' been somethin' like _thief_
+or _cheat_. Nope. It was jest _strawberry_. But I had to lay there all
+night with my eyes propped open, seeing that word on the wall.
+
+"When daylight come it was still there. I seen it when I was dressin'. I
+carried it with me out to the stable. Everywhere I looked against a
+wall, I seed that word. If I hung my head and looked at the ground, it
+was there.
+
+"I knowed if what I'd done about those meachin' little berries was ever
+knowed in the community, like enough I'd never be called by my right
+name any more. They'd call me 'Strawberry Bob.' I knowed it. That was
+goin' to be my punishment fur stealin'."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bob!" groaned Agnes, much moved by his earnestness.
+
+"It's my belief," said old Bob Buckham, "that we don't hafter wait till
+the hereafter ter git our punishment for wrong-doin' here. I reckon most
+times we git it right here and now.
+
+"Wal! I went erbout all that forenoon seein' _strawberry_ marked up
+everywhere. I snum! it was right acrosst marm's forehead when I looked
+at her--and there warn't no other mark there in them days, you may be
+sure.
+
+"I started in to pack berries jest the same as I did the day before.
+Then, of a sudden, I says to myself, 'Bob Buckham, you derned thief!
+Stop it! Ten dollars a day won't pay you for bein' called "Strawberry
+Bob"!'
+
+"So I boxed them poor berries separate and I told the shipper what I'd
+done the day before. I told him to take ten dollars off my order. He
+grinned at me.
+
+"'There was a railroad wreck yesterday, Bob, and our car went to pot.
+I'll git full damages from the railroad company.'
+
+"'Not for them berries of mine, Silas,' I told him. He was Silas Wales.
+'You _de_-duct what my berries cost you in full, and I'll turn back my
+hull order to ye!'
+
+"He hummed and hawed; but he done it. He axed me was I havin' a hard
+time meetin' the int'rest on my mortgage, an' I told him the trewth.
+When the mortgage come due that year he come 'round and offered to let
+me have the money at a cheaper rate than I'd been payin', an' all the
+time I wanted. Ye see, that was a cheap way of gittin' a reperation for
+bein' honest, after all."
+
+"And didn't you see the strawberry mark after that?" sighed Agnes.
+
+"Nope. Nor they never called me 'Strawberry Bob,' though I've been
+raisin' more berries than most folks in this locality, ever since,"
+said Bob Buckham.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Buckham!" exclaimed Agnes. "I ought to be called 'Strawberry
+Agnes'!"
+
+"Heh? What for?" asked the startled farmer.
+
+"Because I stole berries! I stole them from you! Last May!" gulped the
+girl. "You know when those girls raided your field? I was one of them. I
+was the first one over the fence and picked the first berry. I--I'm
+awfully sorry; but I really didn't think how wrong it was at the time.
+And I wish I'd come to you and told you before, instead of waiting until
+the principal of our school--Mr. Marks--and everybody, knew about it."
+
+"Sho, honey!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham, softly. "Was you one o' them gals?
+I'd no idee. Wal! say no more about it. What you took didn't break me,"
+and he laughed. "And I won't tell nobody," he added, patting Agnes'
+shoulder.
+
+As Agnes dried her eyes before joining her sisters and Neale O'Neil at
+the door, she thought that it was rather unnecessary for the farmer to
+make that promise. When he had caused the list of girls' names to be
+sent to the school principal, he had assured her punishment.
+
+While Bob Buckham was saying to himself: "Now, that's a leetle gal after
+my own heart. She's a hull sight nicer than that other one. And she's
+truly repentant, too."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TEA WITH MRS. ELAND
+
+
+Neale was right. At the supper table at the old Corner House that night
+(the Saturday night supper was always a gala affair) Mrs. MacCall asked,
+anxiously:
+
+"What's the matter with you, boy? Are you sick?"
+
+"Oh, no, Mrs. MacCall. Do I look sick?" responded the white-haired boy,
+startled.
+
+"Must be somethin' the matter with you," said the housekeeper, with
+conviction. "Otherwise you wouldn't stop at only two helpings of beans
+and only four fishcakes. I'll have to speak to Mr. Con Murphy," she
+added grimly. "He'd better see that you have a good course of jalap.
+You're getting puny."
+
+Uncle Rufus chuckled unctiously from the background. "Dat boy," he
+murmured, "ain't sickenin' none. He done et a peck o' chestnuts, I
+reckon, already."
+
+In spite of Neale's "puny" appetite, they had a great chestnut roast
+that evening. Eva Larry and Myra Stetson came in unexpectedly, and the
+Corner House girls had a very hilarious time. Neale was the only boy
+present; but he was rather used, by this time, to playing squire to "a
+whole raft of girls."
+
+"And, oh, girls," cried the news-bearer, Eva, "what do you think? The
+School Board has voted to let us give _The Carnation Countess_. I heard
+it to-day. It's straight. The parts will be given out this next week.
+And, oh! poor us!"
+
+"Miss Lederer said we would have quite important parts in the play,"
+Ruth said complacently.
+
+"And _we_ can only look on," wailed Myra Stetson, quite as lugubriously
+as Eva.
+
+"And I'm going to be a bee--I'm going to be a bee!" Dot danced around
+the table singing this refrain.
+
+"I hope you won't be such a noisy one," Tess said admonishingly. "You're
+worse than a bumblebee, Dot Kenway."
+
+Agnes really felt too bad to say anything for a minute or two. It was
+true she felt better in her heart since she had confessed to Mr. Bob
+Buckham; but the fact that she could not act in the musical play was as
+keen a disappointment as lively, ambitious Agnes Kenway had ever
+suffered.
+
+For once Eva Larry's news was exact. It was announced to all grades of
+the Milton Public Schools on Monday morning that _The Carnation
+Countess_ was to be produced at the Opera House, probably during the
+week preceding Christmas, and all classes were to have an opportunity
+of helping in the benefit performance.
+
+A certain company of professional players, headed by a capable manager
+and musical director, were to take charge of the production, train the
+children when assembled, and arrange the stage setting. Half the
+proceeds of the entertainment were to go to the Milton Women's and
+Children's Hospital--an institution in which everybody seemed now to be
+interested.
+
+The fact that a certain little girl named Tess Kenway, had really set
+the ball of interest in motion, was quite forgotten, save by a few. As
+for the next to the youngest Corner House girl, she never troubled her
+sweet-tempered little self about it. "Oh! I'm so glad!" she sighed, with
+satisfaction. "Now my Mrs. Eland can stay."
+
+"What's that you say, Theresa?" Miss Pepperill's sharp voice demanded.
+
+Tess repeated her expression of gratitude.
+
+"Humph!" ejaculated the red-haired teacher. "So you are still interested
+in Mrs. Eland, are you? Have you seen her again?"
+
+"I am going to take tea with her this afternoon," said Tess, eagerly.
+"So is my sister, Dot."
+
+"You don't know if she has found _her_ sister yet?" asked Miss
+Pepperill, but more to herself than as though she expected a reply. "No!
+of course not."
+
+Tess hurried to meet Dot after school. She found her sister at the
+girls' gate of the primary department, hugging the Alice-doll (of
+course, in a brand new cloak) and listening with wide-eyed interest to
+the small, impish, black-haired boy who was talking earnestly to her.
+
+"And then I shall run away and sail the rollin' billers," he declared.
+"I hope they won't find old Pepperpot after I tie her to her
+chair--not--not from Friday afternoon till Monday mornin', when they
+open school again. That's what I hope. And by that time I can sail clean
+around the Cape of Good Hope to the Cannibal Islands, I guess."
+
+"Oh-ee!" gasped Dot. "And suppose the cannibals eat you, Sammy Pinkney?
+What would your mother say?"
+
+"She'd be sorry, I guess," said Sammy, darkly. "And so would my pop. But
+shucks!" he added quickly. "Pirates never get eat by cannibals. They're
+too smart."
+
+"That's all you know about it, Sammy Pinkney!" said Tess, sternly,
+breaking in upon the boasting of the scapegrace, who dearly loved an
+audience. "We met a man this summer that knew all about pirates--or
+_said_ he did; didn't we, Dot?"
+
+"Oh, yes. The clam-man," the smallest Corner House girl agreed. "And he
+had a wooden leg."
+
+"Did he get it bein' a pirate?" demanded Sammy.
+
+"He got it fighting pirates," Tess said firmly. "But the pirates got it
+worse. They got their legs mowed off."
+
+"We-ell. Huh! I guess it would be fun to have a wooden leg, at that,"
+the boy stoutly declared. "Anyway, a feller with a wooden leg wouldn't
+have growin' pains in it; and I have 'em awful when I go to bed nights,
+in _my_ legs."
+
+As the little girls went on to the hospital, Dot suddenly felt some
+hesitancy about going, after all. "You know, Tess, they do such _awful_
+things to folks in horsepistols!"
+
+"For pity's sake! stop calling it _that_," begged Tess. "And they don't
+do awful things in hospitals."
+
+"Yes they do; they take off folkses legs and arms and pull their teeth
+and----"
+
+"They don't!" denied Tess, flatly. "Not in this hospital, anyway. Here,
+they cure sick ladies and little children that are lame and sick. Oh!
+it's a be-a-utiful place!"
+
+"How do you know?" asked Dot, doubtfully.
+
+"Sadie Goronofsky's cousin was there," Tess said, with confidence.
+"Sadie went to see her--and she had jelly and oranges and farina
+puddings and all kinds of nice things to eat. Sadie knows, because she
+let her lick the tumblers and dishes. Besides, we're not going to be
+patients there," Tess declared. "We're only calling on Mrs. Eland."
+
+"I hope she has some of that nice farina pudding for tea," sighed Dot.
+"I'm fond of that."
+
+"Don't be a little gobbler, Dot, if she gives us anything good," said
+Tess, with her most elder-sisterly air. "Remember, we promised Ruth to
+be little ladies."
+
+"But goodness!" gasped Dot, "that doesn't mean that we can's eat _at
+all_, does it? I'm dreadful hungry. I always am after school and you
+know Mrs. MacCall lets us have a bite. If being a _lady_ means going
+_hungry_, I don't want to be one--so there, Tess Kenway!"
+
+This frank statement, and Dot's vehemence, might have caused some
+friction between the sisters (for of course Tess felt her importance,
+being the older, and having been particularly charged by Ruth to look
+after her sister) had they not met Neale O'Neil coming from the clothing
+store on High Street. He had a big bundle under his arm.
+
+"Oh, I know what you've got, Neale!" cried Tess. "Those are your new
+clothes."
+
+"You're a good little guesser, Tess Kenway," laughed the boy. "And it's
+a Jim-dandy suit. Ought to be. It cost me eight dollars of my hard
+earned lucre."
+
+"What's that?" demanded Dot, hearing something new.
+
+"Lucre is wealth. But eight dollars isn't much wealth, is it?" responded
+Neale, and passed on, leaving the two little girls at the steps of the
+main entrance to the hospital.
+
+There was no time now for discussing what Mrs. MacCall called "pros and
+cons," for the hall door was opened and a girl in a blue uniform and
+white cap beckoned the two little visitors up the steps.
+
+"You are the two children Mrs. Eland is expecting, aren't you?" she
+asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Tess, politely. "We have a 'pointment with her."
+
+"That's right," laughed the nurse. "She's waiting for you in her room.
+And the tea smells good."
+
+"Is--is there farina pudding?" asked Dot, hesitatingly. "Did you smell
+that, too?"
+
+Tess tugged at the smaller girl's coat and scowled at her reprovingly;
+but the pretty nurse only laughed. "I shouldn't be surprised if it were
+farina pudding, little girl," she said.
+
+And it was! Dot had two plates of it, besides her pretty cup of cambric
+tea. But Tess talked with Mrs. Eland in a really ladylike manner.
+
+In the first place the matron of the hospital was very glad to see the
+two Corner House girls. She did not have on her gray cloak or little
+bonnet with the white ruche. Dot's Alice-doll's new cloak was a
+flattering imitation of the cut and color of the hospital matron's
+outdoor garment.
+
+Mrs. Eland was just as pink-cheeked and pretty as ever indoors; but the
+children saw that her hair was almost white. Whether it was the white of
+age, or of trouble, it would have been hard to say. In either case Mrs.
+Eland had not allowed the cause of her whitening hair to spoil her
+temper or cheerfulness.
+
+That her natural expression of countenance was sad, one must allow; but
+when she talked with her little visitors, and entertained them, her
+sprightliness chased the troubled lines from the lady's face.
+
+"And--and have you found your sister yet, Mrs. Eland?" Tess asked
+hesitatingly in the midst of the visit. "I--I wouldn't ask," she
+hastened to say, "but Miss Pepperill wanted to know. She asked twice."
+
+"Miss Pepperill?" asked the matron, somewhat puzzled.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. Don't you 'member? She's my teacher that wanted me to learn
+the sovereigns of England."
+
+"Why, of course! I had forgotten," admitted Mrs. Eland. "Miss
+Pepperill."
+
+"Yes. And she's much int'rested in you," said Tess, seriously. "Of
+course, everybody is. They are going to make a play, and we're going to
+be in it----"
+
+"I'm going to be a bee," said Dot, in a muffled voice.
+
+"And it's going to be played for money so's you can stay here in the
+hospital and be matron," went on Tess.
+
+"Ah, yes, my dear! I know about that," said Mrs. Eland, with a very
+sweet smile. "And I know who to thank for it, too."
+
+"Do you?" returned Tess, quite unconscious of the matron's meaning.
+"Well! you see, Miss Pepperill's interested, too. She only asked me for
+the second time to-day if I'd seen you again and if you had found your
+sister."
+
+"No, no, my dear. I never can hope to find her now," said Mrs. Eland,
+shaking her head.
+
+"She was lost in a fire," said Dot, suddenly.
+
+"Why, yes! how did you know?" queried the lady, in surprise.
+
+"The man that shot the eagle said so," Dot replied. "And he wanted to
+know if you were much related to Lem--Lemon----"
+
+"_Lem-u-el!_" almost shrieked Tess. "Not Lemon, child. Lemuel Aden."
+
+"Oh, yes!" agreed the smaller girl, quite calmly. "That's just as though
+I said Salmon for Samuel--like Sammy Pinkney. Well! It isn't such a
+great difference, is it?"
+
+"Of course not, my dear," laughed Mrs. Eland. "And from what people tell
+me, my Uncle Lemuel must have been a good deal like a lemon."
+
+"Then he was your uncle?" asked Tess.
+
+"And--and was he real puckrative?" queried Dot. "For that's what Aunt
+Sarah says a lemon is."
+
+"He was a pretty sour man, I guess," said Mrs. Eland, shaking her head.
+"I came East when I was a little girl, looking for him. That was after
+my dear father and mother died and they had taken my sister away from
+me," she added. "But what about the man that shot the eagle? Who was
+he?"
+
+Tess told her about their adventures of the previous Saturday in the
+chestnut woods and the visit to the farmhouse afterward. Dot added:
+
+"And that eagle man don't like your Uncle Lem-u-el, either."
+
+"Why not?" asked Mrs. Eland, quickly, and flushing a little.
+
+Before Tess could stop the little chatterbox--if she had thought to--Dot
+replied: "'Cause he says your uncle's brother stole. He told us so. So
+he did, Tess Kenway--now, didn't he?"
+
+"You mustn't say such things," Tess admonished her.
+
+But the mischief was done. The matron lost all her pretty color, and her
+lips looked blue and her face drawn.
+
+"What do you suppose he meant by that?" she asked slowly, and almost
+whispering the question. "That my Uncle Lem's brother was a thief? Why,
+Uncle Lem only had one brother."
+
+"He was the one," Dot said, in a most matter-of-fact tone. "It was five
+hundred dollars. And the eagle man said he and his mother suffered for
+that money and she died--his mother, you know--'cause she had to work so
+hard when it was gone. Didn't she, Tess?"
+
+The conversation had got beyond Tess Kenway's control. She felt, small
+as she was, that something wrong had been said. By the look on Mrs.
+Eland's pale face the kind-hearted child knew that she was hurt and
+confused--and Tess was the tenderest hearted child in the world.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Eland!" she crooned, coming close to the lady who sat before
+her little stove, with her face turned aside that the children should
+not see the tears gathering in her eyes. "Oh, Mrs. Eland! I guess Mr.
+Buckham didn't mean that. Of course, none of _your_ folks could be
+thieves--of course not!"
+
+In a little while the matron asked the children a few more questions,
+including Mr. Buckham's full name, and how he was to be reached. She had
+not been in the neighborhood of Ipswitch Curve since she had first come
+from the West--a newly made orphan and with the loss of her little
+sister a fresh wound in her poor heart. So she had forgotten the
+strawberry farmer, and most of the other people in the old neighborhood
+where her father had lived before going West.
+
+Dot Kenway was quite unconscious of having involuntarily inflicted a
+wound in Mrs. Eland's mind and heart that she was doomed not to recover
+from for long weeks. As the sisters bade the matron good-bye, and
+started for the old Corner House, just as dusk was falling, Tess felt
+that her friend, Mrs. Eland, was really much sadder than she had been
+when they had begun their call.
+
+Tess, however, could not understand the reason for this.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+NEALE SUFFERS A SHORTENING PROCESS
+
+
+Naturally, Neale O'Neil stopped at the old Corner House on his way home
+with his new suit of clothes, to display them to Agnes and the others.
+In spite of Ruth's pronounced distaste for boys, she could not help
+having a secret interest in Neale O'Neil, and Agnes and Mrs. MacCall
+were not the only inmates of the Stower mansion that wanted to see the
+new suit on the boy, to be sure, before he appeared at church in it the
+next Sunday, that it fitted him properly.
+
+"There!" exclaimed the housekeeper, the moment Neale came back from the
+bathroom where he had made the change, and she saw how the gray suit
+looked. "I never knew that Merriefield, the clothier, to sell a suit but
+what either the coat was too big, the vest too long, or the pants out o'
+kilter in some way. Look at them pants!" she added, almost tragically.
+
+"Wha--what's the matter with them?" queried Neale, somewhat excited, and
+trying to see behind him. He was quite an acrobat, but he could not look
+down his spinal column. "Are they torn?"
+
+"Tore? No! Only tore off a mile too long," snorted Mrs. MacCall.
+
+"I declare, Neale," chuckled Agnes, "they are awfully long. They drag at
+the heel."
+
+"And I've got 'em pulled up now till I feel as though I was going to be
+cut in two," complained the boy.
+
+"Made for a man--made for a man," sniffed Aunt Sarah, who chanced to be
+in the sitting room. She did not often take any interest in Neale
+O'Neil--or appear to, at least. But she eyed the too long trousers
+malevolently. "Ought to be cut off two inches."
+
+"Yes; a good two inches," agreed Mrs. MacCall.
+
+"Leave the pants here, Neale, and some of us will get time to shorten
+them for you before next Sunday. You won't want to wear them before
+then, will you?" said Ruth.
+
+"Oh, no," returned Neale. "I'm not going to parade these to school,
+first off--just as Agnes does every new hair-ribbon she buys."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Smartie. Hair-ribbons aren't like suits of clothes, I
+should hope."
+
+"If they were," chuckled the boy, "I s'pose you'd have a pair of my
+trousers tied on your pigtail and hanging down your back."
+
+For that she chased him out of the house and they had a game of romps
+down under the grape-arbor and around the garden.
+
+"Dear me!" sighed Ruth, "Neale makes Aggie so tomboyish. I don't know
+what to do about it."
+
+"Sho, honey!" observed the housekeeper. "What do you care as long as
+she's healthy and pretty and happy? Our Aggie is one of the best."
+
+"Of course she is," rejoined the oldest Corner House girl. "But she's
+getting so big--and is so boisterous. And see what trouble she has got
+into about that frolic last spring. She can't play in this show that the
+others are going to act in."
+
+"That's too bad," said Mrs. MacCall, threading her needle. "If ever
+there was a girl cut out to be a mimic and actress, it's Aggie Kenway."
+
+"Don't for pity's sake tell her that!" cried Ruth, in alarm. "It will
+just about make her crazy, if you do. She is being punished for raiding
+that farmer's field--and it's right she should be punished----"
+
+"Mean man!" snapped Aunt Sarah, suddenly. "Those gals couldn't have eat
+many of his old berries."
+
+"Oh! I don't think Mr. Bob Buckham is mean," Ruth observed slowly,
+surprised to see Aunt Sarah take up cudgels for Agnes, whom the old lady
+often called "hare-brained." "And he is not punishing the girls of the
+basket ball team. Mr. Marks is doing that."
+
+"How did Mr. Marks know about it?" put in Aunt Sarah again.
+
+"Well, we suppose Mr. Buckham told him. So Mr. Marks said, I believe."
+
+"Mean man, then!" reiterated the old lady.
+
+That was her only comment upon the matter. But once having expressed her
+opinion of the strawberry man, nothing on earth could have changed Aunt
+Sarah's mind toward him.
+
+Agnes herself could not hold any hard feeling toward Mr. Buckham. Not
+after listening to his story, and being forgiven so frankly and freely
+her part in the raid on the strawberry patch.
+
+However much her sisters and the rest of the family felt for Agnes, the
+latter suffered more keenly as the week went by. The teachers in each
+grade took half an hour a day to read the synopsis of _The Carnation
+Countess_ to their pupils and to explain the part such pupils would have
+in the production. Also the training of those who had speeches or songs
+began. Of course, the preliminary training for the dance steps was left
+to the physical culture teachers on Friday afternoon.
+
+Agnes and her fellow culprits had to sit and listen to it all, knowing
+full well that they could have no part in the performance.
+
+"But just think!" Myra Stetson said, as they came out of school on
+Thursday. "Just think! Trix Severn is going to be Innocent Delight, that
+awfully nice girl who appears in every act. Think of it! She showed me
+the part Professor Ware gave her. Think of it--_Innocent Delight_!"
+
+"Oh! oh! oh!" gasped the chorus of unhappy basket ball players.
+
+"And she is every bit as guilty as we are," added Eva Larry.
+
+"Hush!" commanded Agnes. "Somebody'll hear you."
+
+"What if?"
+
+"We don't want Trix to say that we dragged her into our trouble when she
+was lucky enough to escape."
+
+"And I'd just like to know how she did escape," murmured Myra.
+
+"I think Mr. Marks is just as mean!" exclaimed Mary Breeze. "Miss
+Lederer said I had a good chance to be Bright Thoughts--she would have
+picked me for that part. And now I can't be in the play at all!"
+
+"Goodness, no! We can't even 'carry out the dead,' as my brother calls
+it," said another girl. "The door is entirely shut to us."
+
+"We all ought to have had a bright thought and have stayed out of that
+farmer's field," growled Eva. "Mean old hunks!"
+
+"Who?" cried Agnes.
+
+"That Buckham man."
+
+"No, he isn't!" said the Corner House girl, stoutly. "He's a fine old
+man. I've talked with him."
+
+"Oh, Agnes!" cried Myra. "Did you see him and try to beg off for us?"
+
+"No. I didn't do that. I didn't see that that would help us. Mr. Marks
+has punished us, not Mr. Bob Buckham."
+
+"I bet she did," said Mary Breeze, unkindly. "At least, I bet she tried
+to beg off for herself."
+
+"Now, Mary, you know you don't believe any such thing," Eva said. "We
+know what kind of girl Agnes Kenway is. She would not do such a thing.
+If she asked, it would be for us all."
+
+"No," said Agnes, shortly. "I did not do that. I just told Mr. Buckham
+how sorry I was for taking the berries."
+
+"Oh! What did he say, Aggie?" asked another girl.
+
+"He forgave me. He was real nice about it," Agnes confessed.
+
+"But he told on us. Otherwise we wouldn't be in this pickle," Mary
+Breeze said. "I don't call that nice."
+
+Agnes had it on her tongue to say that she did not believe Mr. Bob
+Buckham had sent the list of the culprit's names to Mr. Marks. Although
+she had said nothing more to Neale O'Neil about it, she knew that the
+boy was confident that the list of girls' names reached the principal of
+the Milton High through some other channel than that of the farmer.
+Agnes herself was assured that Mr. Buckham could not write. Nor did he
+and his wife seem like people who would do such a thing. Besides, how
+had the farmer obtained the girls' names, in the first place?
+
+Like Neale, too, Agnes had a feeling that Trix Severn somehow held the
+key to the mystery. But the Corner House girl would not say so aloud.
+Indeed, she had refused to acknowledge this belief to Neale.
+
+So now she kept still and allowed the other girls to do the talking and
+surmising.
+
+"Well, say what you may," Myra Stetson said at last. "Trix is one lucky
+girl. But she'll make a fine Innocent Delight----"
+
+"I don't think!" finished Eva. "Aggie is the one for that. A blonde. Who
+ever but Professor Ware would think of giving such a part to a dark
+girl?"
+
+"Let's not criticise," Agnes said, with a sigh. "We can't be in it, but
+we mustn't knock."
+
+"Right-oh!" said Myra, the cheery one. "We can go to the show and root
+for the others."
+
+"Well!" gasped Eva, "I'd like to see myself applaud Trix Severn as
+Innocent Delight! I--guess--not!"
+
+Although Ruth Kenway had not been selected for one of the speaking
+parts, she was quite as excited, nevertheless, as those who had been
+thus chosen. To keep one's mind upon lessons and _The Carnation
+Countess_ at the same time, was difficult even for the steady-minded
+Ruth.
+
+Dot went "buzzing" about the house like a veritable bee, singing the
+song that was being taught her and her mates. Tess' class were to be
+butterflies and hummingbirds. And--actually!--Tess had been given a part
+to speak.
+
+It was not very long, but it was of some importance; and her name,
+Theresa Kenway, would appear on the programme, as Swiftwing.
+
+It really was a mystery how Tess came to be chosen for the part. She was
+such a quiet, unobtrusive child that she never would be noticed in a
+crowd of other children of her age. But when Professor Ware, the musical
+director, came around to Miss Pepperill's class to "look the talent
+over," as he expressed it, he chose Tess without the least hesitancy for
+Swiftwing, the hummingbird.
+
+"You lucky dear!" Agnes said. "Well! at least the Kenways will be
+represented on the programme, if I can't do anything myself."
+
+Others, besides her immediate girl friends, said abroad that Agnes
+Kenway should be Innocent Delight. She was just fitted for the part.
+Miss Shipman, Agnes' old teacher, joined Miss Lederer in petitioning
+that the second oldest Corner House girl be given the part instead of
+Trix Severn. Trix, as a very pronounced brunette, would much better be
+given a part like Tom-o'-Dreams or Starlight.
+
+But Mr. Marks was obdurate. None of the girls who had entered into the
+reprehensible prank on the way back from the basket ball game at
+Fleeting could have any part in the performance of _The Carnation
+Countess_.
+
+"The farmer wrote me of their stealing the berries in such a strain that
+I fear he may take legal action against the parents of the foolish
+girls. It would be a lasting disgrace for any of the names of these
+girls to appear on our programme and in court proceedings at the same
+time," added the principal, though smiling at this conceit. "I do not
+see how I can change my ruling."
+
+But Agnes could not understand Mr. Bob Buckham. His letter to Mr. Marks
+must have been really vindictive; yet he did not seem to be at all the
+sort of person who would be so stern and uncompromising.
+
+Just what Neale had done toward getting his girl chum out of "the mess,"
+as he called it, Agnes did not know. At this time Neale suffered
+something which quite took up his attention.
+
+Those trousers that were too long!
+
+Saturday of this very busy week came, and Agnes, in dusting the
+sitting-room, found Neale's new gray trousers, neatly folded, on Ruth's
+sewing-table.
+
+"Oh, Ruthie!" she said. "You never fixed these pants."
+
+"I'm going to," her sister replied, and sat right down, there and then,
+carefully ripped the hem at the bottom of each trouser-leg, cut off two
+inches and stitched a new hem very carefully, putting back the
+stiffening and sewing on the "heel-strap" in a very workmanlike manner.
+
+Agnes ran to the kitchen for an iron and pressed the bottom of the
+trouser-legs to conform with the tailor's creases. "There! that's done,"
+she said, "and done right."
+
+It most certainly was done, whether right or not, the sequel was to
+show. After supper Neale started for home and Agnes gave him the new
+trousers.
+
+"I suppose you'll want to wear that fancy suit of yours to church
+to-morrow morning," she said.
+
+"Bet you!" he replied cheerfully. "Did you cut 'em down?"
+
+"Ruthie did," said Agnes.
+
+"Good for her! Tell her 'Thanks'!"
+
+As he went through the front hall Aunt Sarah put her head over the
+balustrade and asked:
+
+"Did you get them pants, boy?"
+
+She never by any possibility called Neale by his right name, and her
+voice now was just as sharp as ever.
+
+"Yes, ma'am--thank you," Neale said politely.
+
+In the kitchen Mrs. MacCall said, with a smile: "The pants all right,
+Neale?"
+
+"Sure they are," he declared, as he went out. Then he thought: "Dear me!
+seems as though everybody has a lot of interest in my new clothes."
+
+In the morning, early, when he put the suit on to display it to the old
+cobbler with whom Neale lived, the boy experienced a sudden and
+surprising interest in the trousers himself.
+
+The Corner House girls were at breakfast when, with a great clatter,
+Neale rushed in at the back door, through the kitchen, and into the
+dining room. He had on his new jacket and vest, but around his waist was
+tied a voluminous kitchen apron that Mr. Con Murphy wore when he
+cooked, which covered Neale to his insteps.
+
+"Dear me! what is the matter, Neale?" asked Ruth, with some vexation.
+
+"Matter? Matter enough!" cried the white-haired boy, very red in the
+face. "_Look what you did to my pants!_"
+
+He lifted the apron and displayed a wealth of blue yarn sock above his
+shoe-tops, and hose supporters as well.
+
+"For the good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated Aunt Sarah.
+
+"I _never_--in all my life!" cried Mrs. MacCall.
+
+"Ma soul an' body!" chuckled Uncle Rufus from the background. "Somebody
+done sawed off dat boy's pants too short, for suah!"
+
+"Dear suz!" added the housekeeper. "I'm sure I never did _that_."
+
+"You can't tell me 'twas _me_ done it," snapped Aunt Sarah.
+
+"Oh, Neale!" wailed Ruth. "I didn't cut off but two inches."
+
+"_You_, Niece Ruth?" exclaimed Aunt Sarah.
+
+"That's what _I_ done."
+
+"Oh, oh!" sharply cried Mrs. MacCall. "I cut 'em off, too!"
+
+Uncle Rufus almost dropped the dish of ham and eggs he was serving.
+Agnes shouted:
+
+"Oh, my heart alive! _Six inches off the bottom of those trousers!_ You
+have gone back into short pants, Neale O'Neil, that's sure!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE FIRST REHEARSAL
+
+
+So Neale O'Neil did not parade his new grey suit to church on that
+particular Sunday. Before the next came around Ruth had purchased
+another pair of trousers that fitted the white-haired boy, and the much
+cut-down pair was saved for patches.
+
+Something quite as interesting to him and the Corner House girls as a
+new suit, appeared at the First Church, however, which they all
+attended. Mr. Bob Buckham was at the morning service.
+
+The girls and Neale did not see the farmer till after the sermon. Then
+it was Agnes who first spied him, and she hurried back to where the old
+man was shaking hands with two or three of the elderly members of the
+congregation, who knew him.
+
+Mr. Buckham in his Sunday clothes looked no more staid and respectable
+than he did at home; and his eyes twinkled as merrily and his smile was
+just as kind as on week-days.
+
+"Hullo! here's one of my smart little friends," he exclaimed, welcoming
+Agnes. "How's your mind now, miss? Quite calm _and_ contented?"
+
+"I feel better than I did," confessed Agnes. "But I'm paying for my
+wrong-doing just the same. You know, Mr. Buckham, you said you thought
+we almost always got punished for our sins right here and now. We are.
+We girls who stole from you, you know."
+
+"Sho'! didn't I tell you to say no more about that?" cried the farmer.
+
+"But Mr. Marks, our principal, is punishing us," Agnes told him.
+
+"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham, innocently.
+
+"Eva and Myra and Mary and a lot of them, as well as myself, are
+forbidden to take any part in the play that is going to be given for the
+benefit of the Women's and Children's Hospital."
+
+"Wal, that's what I call rough!" the farmer admitted. "To my mind the
+berries weren't worth all this catouse over 'em. No, sir!"
+
+"But what did you _suppose_ he would do to us?" asked the Corner House
+girl, desperately.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mr. Marks."
+
+"Why--I dunno," said the puzzled farmer. "It re'lly is too bad he
+l'arned about you gals playin' that prank, ain't it?"
+
+Agnes stared at him. She could not understand this at all. And
+immediately Mr. Buckham went on to say: "The Women's and Children's
+Hospital, eh? That's where your friend, Mrs. Eland, is matron, isn't
+it?"
+
+"She is Tess' and Dot's friend," explained Agnes.
+
+"Wal! I come inter town pertic'lar to-day to see her. I got kind of a
+funny letter from her this week."
+
+"From Mrs. Eland?"
+
+"Yep. Marm said I'd better answer it in person. Word o' mouth ain't so
+ha'sh as a letter, ye know. And I ain't no writer myself."
+
+Had he said this to Ruth, for instance, she would doubtless have been
+interested enough to have asked some questions, and so discovered what
+trouble Dot's busy tongue had started. Agnes, however, only listened
+perfunctorily to the farmer's speech. Her mind was too perplexed about
+the letter which had reached Mr. Marks purporting to come from Mr.
+Buckham, in which he had complained of the girls stealing his berries.
+Mr. Buckham spoke as though he had no knowledge of the information
+lodged with the principal of the high school.
+
+Now Tess and Dot saw "the eagle man" and they came clamoring about him.
+Ruth came, too; and Neale followed. The boy had had no opportunity of
+talking to the farmer alone the day of the chestnutting party. Now he
+invited Mr. Buckham to go home with him to Mr. Con Murphy's for dinner,
+and the old farmer accepted.
+
+"That pretty, leetle gal's mighty bothered about her and her friends
+playin' hob in my berry patch last May," Mr. Bob Buckham said, as he
+and Neale crossed the Parade Ground. "How'd that school teacher l'arn
+of it? Too bad! I reckon the gals didn't mean no harm."
+
+"Why," cried Neale, flushing, and looking at the old man curiously.
+"Somebody told on them."
+
+"Told the teacher, you mean?"
+
+"Yes. Wrote a letter to Mr. Marks giving all their names."
+
+"Sho! ain't that a shame?" said Mr. Buckham, calm as a summer sea.
+
+"Pretty mean I think myself, sir," Neale said warmly. "It stirred Mr.
+Marks all up. He says he thinks you may intend making the girls pay for
+the berries they took."
+
+"_What's that?_" demanded the farmer, stopping stock still on the walk.
+
+"He says your letter sounds as though you would do just that."
+
+"_My_ letter?"
+
+"Mr. Marks says the letter came from you."
+
+"Why, Neale, you know I ain't no writest," gasped the farmer. "It ain't
+possible he thinks I'd write him about a peck or two of strawberries?
+They was some of my best and earliest ones, and I was mad enough about
+it at the time; but, shucks! old Bob Buckham ain't mean enough to harry
+a pack of gals about sech a thing, I should hope!"
+
+Neale stared at him with a look of satisfaction on his face.
+
+"Don't mean to tell me that Pretty thinks that of me, do ye?" added the
+old gentleman, much worried.
+
+"Yes, sir. She thinks you sent the letter."
+
+"Wal! she treats me mighty nice, then. I'd des-arve snubbin'--I most
+surely would--at her han's if she thinks I am that mean. She's a mighty
+nice gal."
+
+"She's the best little sport ever, Aggie is!" declared the boy,
+enthusiastically. Then he added: "I knew it wasn't like you to do such a
+thing, and it's puzzled me. But somebody wrote in your name and listed
+all the girls that raided your berry patch--_but one_."
+
+"All but one gal?"
+
+"Yes, sir. One girl's name was left off the list," Neale said
+confidently.
+
+"Oh, dear me! Dear, dear me!" murmured the old farmer, pursing his lips
+and eyeing Neale very gravely.
+
+"And that particular girl is going to have one of the best parts in the
+show they are giving for the hospital benefit," Neale pursued.
+
+"You don't say so?" said old Bob Buckham, still seriously.
+
+"And that very part is just what would be given our Aggie if she were
+not in disgrace--yes, sir!"
+
+"Not little Pretty?" demanded the farmer.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"My! my!"
+
+"This one girl whose name did not reach Mr. Marks was just as guilty as
+the others. That's right, Mr. Buckham. And she's got out of it----"
+
+"Hi!" exclaimed the farmer, sharply. "You're accusin' her of makin' all
+the trouble for her mates."
+
+"If you didn't, Mr. Buckham," said Neale, boldly.
+
+"I most sartainly didn't!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham. "You know I wouldn't,
+Neale O'Neil; don't you?"
+
+"I never did think you did so mean a thing," declared Neale, frankly.
+
+"But somebody told your teacher."
+
+"Wrote him."
+
+"And he thinks I done it?"
+
+"Whoever it was must have signed your name to the letter."
+
+"Nobody but marm does that," said the old man, quickly. "'Strawberry
+Farm'--that is what we call the place, you know, Neale."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"An' I got it printed on some letter paper, and marm always writes my
+letters for me on that paper. Then, if it's a _very_ pertic'lar one, I
+sign it myself. But you know, Neale, I ain't no schollard. I handle a
+muck-fork better'n I do a pen."
+
+"I know--yes, sir," agreed the boy.
+
+"Now," continued the farmer, vigorously, "you find out if this here
+letter that was writ, and your teacher received, was writ on one of our
+letterheads. Of course, marm never done it; but--p'raps---- Wal! you
+find out if it re'lly did come from Strawberry Farm, and if Bob
+Buckham's name is onto it. That's all."
+
+And Mr. Buckham refused to discuss the matter any further at that time.
+
+The busy fall days were flying. It was already the middle of October.
+Hallowe'en was in prospect and Carrie Poole, who lived in a modernized
+farmhouse out of town on the Buckshot Road, planned to give a big
+Hallowe'en party. Of course the two Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil
+were invited.
+
+Looking forward to the party divided interest among the older girls with
+the preparations for the performance of _The Carnation Countess_.
+
+A full fortnight before the thirty-first of October, came the first
+general rehearsal of the musical play. It could not be rehearsed with
+the scenery, of course, nor on the Opera House stage. The big hall of
+the high school building had a large stage and here the preliminary
+rehearsals were to be conducted.
+
+That was a Saturday afternoon eagerly looked forward to. Although the
+boys claimed to have much less interest in the play than the girls, even
+they were excited over the rehearsal. Few of the boys had speaking parts
+in _The Carnation Countess_, but all who had good voices were drafted by
+Professor Ware for the choruses.
+
+"And even those fellows whose voices are changing, and sound more like
+bullfrogs than anything human," chuckled Neale O'Neil, "have got to
+help swell the 'Roman populace' or carry out the dead."
+
+"Now, Neale O'Neil! you know very well," said Tess, reprovingly, "that
+the Romans aren't in this play at all, and there will be no dead to
+carry out."
+
+"Buzz! buzz! buzz-z-z-z!" crooned Dot, rocking her Alice-doll to sleep.
+
+"Somebody'll slap at that bumblebee and try to kill it, if it doesn't
+look out," promised Agnes, pouting. "I wish you folks wouldn't talk
+about the old play. You--make--me--feel--so--bad!"
+
+"You'll feel worse when you see that Trix Severn trying to play Innocent
+Delight," sniffed Eva Larry, who chanced to be present in the Corner
+House sitting-room where the discussion was going on.
+
+"I don't suppose she is really _bad_ in it, Eva," Ruth said.
+
+"Not bad? She's--worse!" proclaimed the boisterous one. "Just wait. I
+know Miss Lederer is heart-broken over her."
+
+"She'll spoil the play, won't she?" asked Tess, the anxious. "I hope I
+won't spoil it, with my Swiftwing part."
+
+"Oh, you're all right, honey," Agnes assured her. "You know your part
+already, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes. It's not nearly so hard to remember as the sovereigns of
+England. And that's how I come to get the part of Swiftwing, I guess."
+
+"What is the way?" asked Ruth, curiously.
+
+"She means the reason," Agnes put in, who had lately begun to criticise
+the family's use of English.
+
+"The reason I got the part?" queried Tess, gravely. "'Cause I could
+recite the sovereigns of England so well. I guess Miss Pepperill told
+Professor Ware, and so he gave me the part in the play."
+
+"Of course!" whispered Neale. "Of course, it couldn't be that they gave
+a certain person her part because, if it hadn't been for her, nobody
+would ever have thought of having a play for the benefit of the
+hospital."
+
+"I hope they gave it to her because they believed she was best fitted
+for the part," said Ruth, placidly.
+
+"Well, believe me!" exclaimed the slangy Eva, "Trix Severn is not fitted
+for her part. Wait till to-morrow afternoon!"
+
+"I have a good mind not to go to the rehearsal at all," sighed Agnes.
+
+But she did not mean that. If she could not be one of the performers
+herself, she was eager to see her fellow-pupils try their talents on the
+stage.
+
+There was no orchestra, of course; but the pianist gave the music cues,
+and the stage-manager lectured the various choruses and dancers, while
+Professor Ware put them through their musical parts. Most of the song
+numbers had become familiar to the young performers. Even Dot Kenway's
+class went through with their part quite successfully. And if they had
+all been "buzzing" as indefatigably as the smallest Corner House girl at
+home and abroad, it was not surprising that they were letter perfect.
+
+The dancing was another matter entirely. To teach a few pupils at a time
+certain steps, and then to try to combine those companies in a single
+regiment, each individual of which must keep perfect time, is a greater
+task than the inexperienced would imagine.
+
+The training of the girls and boys to whom had been assigned the rôles
+of the more or less important characters in the play, was an unhappy
+task in some instances. While most children can be taught to sing, and
+many take naturally to dancing, to instruct them in the mysteries of
+elocution is a task to try the patience of the angels themselves.
+
+None of the professional principals in the cast were present at this
+rehearsal save the gracious lady who was to represent The Carnation
+Countess. She was both cheerful and obliging; but she did lose her
+temper in one instance and spoke sharply.
+
+A certain portion of the first act had been gone over and over again. It
+had been wrecked each time by one certain actor. They had left it and
+gone on with further scenes, and had then gone back to the hard part
+again. It was no use; the girl who did not express her part properly
+balked them all.
+
+"I declare, Professor," the professional said tartly, "you must have
+selected this Innocent Delight with your eyes shut. In the first place,
+_why_ a brunette when the part calls for a blonde, if any part ever
+called for one? It distresses me to say it, but if this Innocent Delight
+is a sample of what your Milton girls can do in a play, you would much
+better change your plans and put on _Puss in Boots_, instead of a piece
+like _The Carnation Countess_. The former would compass the calibre of
+your talent, I should say."
+
+"What did I tell you?" hissed Eva in Agnes' ear. "Trix Severn will spoil
+the whole show!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE HALLOWE'EN PARTY
+
+
+It had become an established custom now for Tess and Dot to call on Mrs.
+Eland each Monday afternoon.
+
+"She is such a nice lady. I wish you could meet my Mrs. Eland," Tess
+said to Mrs. Adams, who lived not far from the old Corner House, on
+Willow Street, and who was one of the first friends the Kenway sisters
+had made in Milton.
+
+Tess had been sent to Mrs. Adams on an errand for Mrs. MacCall, and now
+lingered at the invitation of the lady who loved to have any of the
+Corner House girls come in. "I wish you could meet my Mrs. Eland,"
+repeated Tess. "I believe it would do her good to have more callers.
+They'd liven her up--and she's so sad nowadays. I know _you'd_ liven her
+up, Mrs. Adams."
+
+"Well, child, I hope I wouldn't make her unhappy, I'm sure. I believe in
+folks being lively if they can. I haven't a particle of use for
+_grumps_--no, indeed! 'Laugh and grow fat' is a pretty good motto."
+
+"But you're not fat," suggested Tess; "and you are 'most always
+laughing."
+
+"That's a fact; but it's not worrying that keeps me lean. 'Care killed
+the cat' my mother used to say; but care never killed her, I'm certain!
+Some folks is born for leanness, and I'm one of 'em."
+
+"Well, it's real becoming to you," said Tess, kindly, eyeing the rather
+bony woman with reflective gaze. "And you're not as thin as Briggs, the
+baker. Mrs. MacCall says he doesn't cast a shadow."
+
+"My soul! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Adams. "And his loaves of bread have got
+so't they don't cast much of a shadow. I've been complaining to him
+about his bread. The rise in the price of flour can't excuse altogether
+the stinginess of his loaves.
+
+"He came here the other day about dark, and I had my porch door locked.
+I heard him knock and I asks, 'Who's there?'
+
+"'It's the baker, ma'am,' says he. 'Here's your bread.'
+
+"'Well, bring it in,' says I, forgetting the door was locked.
+
+"'I don't see how I can, ma'am,' he says, ''nless I put it through the
+keyhole, ma'am,' and he begun to giggle. But I put the come-up-ance on
+him," declared Mrs. Adams, with satisfaction. I says:
+
+"'I don't see what's to stop you, Myron Briggs. The goodness knows your
+loaves are small enough to go through the keyhole.' And he didn't have
+nothin' more to say to me."
+
+"Why, I think that's very funny," said Tess, in her sober way. "I'll
+tell that to Mrs. Eland. Maybe it will amuse her."
+
+But on the next occasion when the two younger Corner House girls went to
+the hospital, Tess did not try to cheer the matron's spirits by
+repeating Mrs. Adams's joke on the baker.
+
+Mrs. Eland had been crying. Even usually unobservant Dot noticed it. Her
+eyes were red and her face pale and drawn. The pretty pink of her cheeks
+and the ready twinkle in her gray eyes, were missing.
+
+On the table by the matron's side were some faded old letters--quite a
+bundle of them, in fact--tied with a faded tape. They were docketed
+carefully on their ends with ink that had yellowed with age.
+
+"These are letters from my uncle--'Lemon' Aden, as our little Dot called
+him," Mrs. Eland said, with a sad smile. "To my--my poor father. Those
+letters he put into my hand to take care of when we knew that awful fire
+that destroyed most of our city, was going to sweep away our home.
+
+"I took the letters and Teeny by the hand----"
+
+"Was Teeny your sister's name, Mrs. Eland?" asked Tess, deeply
+interested.
+
+"So we called her," the matron said. "She was such a little fairy! As
+small and delicate as Dot, here. Only she was light--a regular
+milk-and-rose complexion and with red-gold hair."
+
+"Like Tess' teacher's hair?" asked Dot, curiously. "She's got red hair."
+
+"Oh, goodness!" cried Tess, "she's not pretty. That's sure, if her hair
+is red!"
+
+"Teeny's hair was lovely," said Mrs. Eland, ruminatively. "I can
+remember just how she looked. I was but four years older than she; but I
+was a big girl."
+
+"You mean when that awful fire came?" asked Tess.
+
+"Yes, my dear. Father told me to take care of these letters; they were
+important. And to keep tight hold of Teeny's hand."
+
+"And didn't you?" asked Dot, to whose thoroughly Sunday-school-trained
+mind, all punishment directly followed disobedience.
+
+"Oh, yes. I did as he told me. He went back into the house to get
+mother. She was an invalid, you know."
+
+"Like Mrs. Buckham," suggested Tess.
+
+A spasm of pain crossed the hospital matron's face, and she turned away
+for a moment. After a little she continued her story.
+
+"And then the fire came so suddenly that it swallowed the house right
+up!"
+
+"Oh!" gasped Dot.
+
+"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Eland," whispered Tess, patting her arm.
+
+"It was very dreadful," said the gray lady, softly. "Teeny and I were
+grabbed up by some men in a wagon, and the horses galloped us away to
+safety. But our poor mother and father were buried in the ruins of the
+house."
+
+"And you saved the letters?" said Tess.
+
+"But lost Teeny," said Mrs. Eland, sadly. "There was such confusion in
+the camp of the refugees that many families were separated. By and by I
+came East--and I brought these letters. But--but they do me no good now.
+I can prove nothing by them. 'Corroborative evidence,' so the lawyers
+say, is lacking----
+
+"Well, well, well!" she said, breaking off suddenly. "All that does not
+interest you little ones."
+
+"So you couldn't give the letters to your Uncle Lem-u-el?" questioned
+Dot, careful to get the name right this time.
+
+"I never could even see my Uncle Lemuel," said Mrs. Eland, with a sigh.
+"I believe he knew I was searching for him during the last few years of
+his life; but he always kept out of my way."
+
+"Oh! wasn't that bad of him!" cried Tess.
+
+"I don't know. His end was most miserable. People said he must have at
+one time accumulated a great deal of money. He was supposed to be as
+rich a man as lived in Milton--richer than your Uncle Peter Stower. But
+he must have squandered it all in some way. He died finally in the
+Quoharis poorhouse. He did not belong in that town; but he wandered
+there in a storm and they took him in."
+
+"And didn't they find lots of money in his clothes when he was dead?"
+queried Dot, who had heard something about misers.
+
+"Mercy, no! He had no money, I am quite sure," said the lady,
+confidently. "The old townfarm keeper over there tells me that Mr.
+Lemuel Aden left nothing but some worthless papers and letters and a
+little memorandum book, or diary. I suppose they are hardly worth my
+claiming them. At least, I never have done so, and Uncle Lemuel died
+quite fifteen years ago."
+
+After that Mrs. Eland had no more to say about Lemuel Aden for the time
+being, but tried to amuse her little visitors, as usual. And Tess never
+told that joke about Briggs, the baker.
+
+This brings us, naturally, to the eve of All Saints, an occasion much
+given over to feasting and foolery. "When churchyards yawn--if they ever
+do yawn," suggested Neale, as he and the two oldest Corner House girls
+set forth on the crisp evening in question, to walk out to Carrie
+Poole's place.
+
+"I guess folks yarn about them, more than the graves yawn," said Agnes,
+roguishly. "Remember the garret ghost, Ruth?"
+
+"You mean what Dot thought was a goat?" laughed the older girl. "I
+believe you!" she went on, caught in the contagion of slang.
+
+"That was before my time in Milton," said Neale, cheerfully. "But I have
+heard how you Corner House girls laid the ghost that had haunted the old
+place so long."
+
+[Illustration: They saw two huge pumpkin lanterns grinning a welcome
+from the gateposts. Page 173]
+
+"I believe Uncle Peter must have known what it really was," said Ruth,
+thoughtfully. "But it delighted him, I suppose, to have people talk
+about the old house, and be afraid to visit him. He was a recluse."
+
+"And a miser, they say," Neale observed bluntly.
+
+"I don't think we should say that," Ruth replied quickly. "Everybody
+tried to get money from Uncle Peter. Everybody but our mother and
+father, I guess. That is why he left most everything to us."
+
+"Well," Agnes said, "they all declared he haunted the place himself
+after he died."
+
+"That's a wicked story!" Ruth sharply exclaimed. "I don't believe there
+is such a thing as a ghost, anyway!"
+
+"And you, going to a ghost party right now?" cried Neale, laughing.
+
+"These will be play ghosts," returned Ruth.
+
+"Oh, _will_ they? You just wait and see," chuckled the boy, for he and
+his close chum, Joe Eldred, were masters of ceremonies, and they had
+promised to startle Carrie and her guests with "real Hallowe'en ghosts."
+
+Before the Corner House girls and their escort reached the top of the
+hill on which the Poole house stood they saw the two huge pumpkin
+lanterns grinning a welcome from the gateposts. There was a string of
+smaller Hallowe'en lanterns across the porch before the entrance to the
+house. And every time anybody pushed open the gate, a ghostly
+apparition with a glowing head rose up most astonishingly behind the
+porch railing to startle the visitor.
+
+Neale and Joe had been at the house all the afternoon, putting up these
+and other bits of foolery. Joe's father, who was superintendent of the
+Milton Electric Light Company, allowed his son considerable freedom in
+the shops. Joe and Neale had brought out a good-sized battery outfit and
+the necessary wires and attachments; and when the girls stopped on the
+mat at the door to remove their overshoes, each got a distinct shock, to
+the great delight of the earlier guests who stood in the hall to observe
+the fun.
+
+"A ghost pushed you, Ruth Kenway!" cried Carrie, from the stairs.
+
+"Do you dare look down the well with a candle and see if you will see
+your future husband's face floating in the water, Aggie?" demanded Lucy
+Poole, Carrie's cousin.
+
+"Don't want to see my future husband," declared Agnes. "It will be bad
+enough to see him in reality when the awful time arrives."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE FIVE-DOLLAR GOLD PIECE
+
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"A deep, deep silence, please!"
+
+"Don't crowd so close--don't, Mary Breeze! If there are ghosts I can't
+protect you from them," came in Eva Larry's shrill whisper. "I'm sure
+I've not been vaccinated against seeing spirits."
+
+This was after all the visitors had arrived, had removed their wraps,
+had been ushered into the big double parlors and seated. Across the far
+end of the room was drawn a sheet, and the lights were very dim.
+
+A figure in long cloak and conical cap, leaning on a long wand, appeared
+suddenly beside the curtain. A blue light seemed to glimmer faintly
+around the Hallowe'en figure and outline it.
+
+"Oh!" gasped Lucy Poole, "there's the very Old Witch of them all, I do
+declare!"
+
+"The Old Wizard, you mean," laughed Agnes, who knew that Neale O'Neil
+was hidden behind the long cloak and the false face. He looked quite as
+feminine in this rig as any witch ever does look.
+
+"Silence!" commanded again the husky voice from behind the screen.
+
+With some little bustle the party fell still. The Hallowe'en Witch
+raised the wand and rapped the butt three times upon the little stand
+near by.
+
+"Oh! oh! real spirits," gasped Eva. "They always begin with
+table-rappings, don't they?"
+
+"Hush!" commanded the husky voice once more.
+
+"This is a perverse and unbelieving generation," croaked the witch. "Ye
+all doubt black magic and white astrology, and ghostly visitations. I am
+sent by Those Who Fly By Night--at the head of whom flies the Witch of
+Endor--who commune with goblins and fays--I am sent to convert you all
+to the truth.
+
+"Ha! Thunder! Lightning!"
+
+The ears of the company were almost deafened and their eyes blinded by a
+startling crash like thunder behind the screen and a vivid flash of
+zig-zag light across it.
+
+"See!" croaked the supposed hag. "Even Thunder and Lightning do my
+bidding. Now! Rain! Sleet! Advance!"
+
+The wondering spectators began to murmur. An almost perfect imitation of
+dashing sleet against the window panes and rain pouring from the
+water-spouts followed. Joe Eldred, behind the scenes, certainly managed
+the paraphernalia borrowed from the Milton Opera House with good effect.
+
+As the murmurs subsided the voice of the Hallowe'en Witch rose again:
+
+"To prove to you our secret knowledge of all that goes on--even the
+innermost thoughts of your hearts--I will answer any question put to
+me--marvelously--in the twinkling of an eye. Watch the screen!"
+
+Primed beforehand, one of the boys in the back of the room shouted a
+question. The witch whirled about and pointed to the screen. Letters of
+fire seemed to flash from the point of the wand and to cross the sheet,
+forming the words of a pertinent reply to the query that had been asked.
+
+The girls laughed and applauded. The boys stamped and cheered.
+
+Question followed question. Some were spontaneous and the answers showed
+a surprisingly exact knowledge of the questioners' private affairs, or
+else a happy gift at repartee. Of course, the illuminated writing was
+some trick of electricity; nevertheless it was both amusing and
+puzzling.
+
+References to school fun, jokes in class-room, happenings known to most
+of those present who attended the Milton schools, suggested the most
+popular queries.
+
+Suddenly Eva Larry's sharp voice rang through the room. Her question was
+distinctly personal, and it shocked some few of the listeners into
+silence.
+
+"Who told on the basket ball team and got us all barred from taking part
+in the play?"
+
+"Oh, Eva!" groaned Agnes, who sat beside her loyal, if unwise friend.
+
+The witch's wand poised, seemed to hesitate longer than usual, and then
+the noncommittal answer flashed out:
+
+The Traitor is Here!
+
+There was a general shuffling of feet and murmur of surprise. The lights
+went up. The Hallowe'en Witch had disappeared and that part of the
+entertainment was over.
+
+"I'd like to have seen Trix Severn's face when that last question was
+sprung," whispered Myra Stetson to Agnes.
+
+"Oh! it was awful!" murmured the Corner House girl. "Why did you do it,
+Eva?" she demanded of the harum-scarum girl on her other side.
+
+"Huh! do you s'pose I thought that all up by myself?" demanded Eva.
+
+"Why! didn't you?"
+
+"No, ma'am! Neale O'Neil gave it to me written on a piece of paper and
+told me when to shout it out. So now! I guess there's more than just us
+who have suspected that pussy-cat, Trix Severn."
+
+"Oh, don't, girls, don't!" begged Agnes. "We haven't any proof--nor has
+Neale, I'm sure. I'll just tell him what I think about it."
+
+But she had no opportunity of scolding her boy chum on this evening. He
+was so busy preparing the other tricks and frolics which followed that
+Agnes could scarcely say a word to him.
+
+In the big front hall was a booth of black cloth, decorated with
+crescents, stars, and astronomical signs in gilt.
+
+Some of the girls were paring apples in long "curls" and throwing the
+curls over their shoulders to see if the parings would form anything
+like an initial letter on the floor. It was something of a trick to get
+all the skin off the apple in one long, curling piece. But Agnes
+succeeded and threw the peeling behind her.
+
+"I don't see as that's much of any thing," Eva said, reflectively. "Oh,
+Aggie, it's a U!"
+
+"It's a _me_!" laughed the Corner House girl. "Then I'm going to be my
+own best friend. Hurrah!"
+
+"No, little dunce; I mean it's the letter U," said Eva, squeezing her.
+
+"I think it looks more like E, dear," returned Agnes. "So it must stand
+for Eva. You and I are going to be chums _forever_!"
+
+Afterward Agnes remembered that U was an N upside down!
+
+When the girls proposed going out to the spring-house and each looking
+down the well to see whose reflection would appear in the water in the
+light of a ghostly candle, Carrie's mother vetoed it.
+
+"I guess not!" she said vigorously. "I'm not going to have candle-grease
+dripped down my well. Yes! I did it when I was a foolish girl--I know I
+did, Carrie. Your father had no business telling you. What he didn't
+tell you was that your grandfather was a week cleaning out the well,
+and it was right at the beginning of a long, dry spell."
+
+"Who did you see in the well, Mother?" asked Carrie, roguishly.
+
+"Never mind whom I saw. It wasn't your father, although he had begun to
+shine around me, even then," laughed Mrs. Poole.
+
+Suddenly two of the girls screamed. A mysterious light had appeared in
+the black-cloth booth. The gilt signs upon it showed more plainly. There
+was a rustling noise, and then the flap of the booth was pushed back.
+The Hallowe'en Witch appeared in the opening.
+
+"Money!" cried the witch. "Bright, golden coin. It's that for which all
+witches are supposed to sell themselves. See!"
+
+Between thumb and finger the witch held up a shiny five-dollar gold
+piece. In the other hand was held a shallow pan of water.
+
+"To gain gold one must cross water," intoned the witch, solemnly. "This
+gold piece is freely the property of whoever can take it out of the pan
+of water," and with a tinkle the five-dollar coin was dropped into the
+pan.
+
+"The pan," said the witch, being careful not to turn so as to hide the
+pan, but, placing it on a taboret inside the tent, "remains in sight of
+all. One at a time ye may try to pick the coin out of the pan--one at a
+time. That all may have an equal chance, I will declare that as soon as
+one candidate gets the coin another gold piece will be deposited in the
+pan for the next person attempting the feat."
+
+"Why, how silly!" cried Trix Severn, from the background. "If you want
+to give us each a counterfeit five dollars, why not hand it to us?"
+
+"If such exchange is desired, our master, Mr. Poole, stands ready to
+exchange each coin secured by the neophytes for a perfectly good, new,
+five-dollar bill," proceeded the witch.
+
+"There's your chance, Trix!" laughed one of the boys.
+
+"Oh! he's only fooling," replied the hotel-keeper's daughter. She loved
+money.
+
+"Each and every one who wishes may try," went on the witch. "But there
+is a condition."
+
+"Oh!" muttered Trix. "Thought there was some string hitched to it."
+
+"And you're right, there, Trix," murmured Eva Larry.
+
+"Silence!" cried somebody.
+
+"A condition," went on the Hallowe'en Witch. "That condition will be
+whispered in the ear of each candidate who tries to seize the coin."
+
+"No, thank you! I won't try," cried Lucy Poole, laughing and shaking her
+curls. "When he goes to make believe whisper in your ear, he'll bite
+you! I wouldn't trust that old witch!"
+
+The others laughed hilariously at this; but Trix Severn was pushing
+forward. If there was a gold piece to be given away, she wanted first
+chance at it--string, or no string.
+
+"Keep your eyes on the pan!" cried the witch, waving empty hands in the
+air all about the pan and taboret, to show that there was "no
+flim-flam," as the boys called it. "Now! first neophyte step forward!"
+
+"I don't believe he knows what that means," giggled Myra Stetson. "I
+don't."
+
+But she could not step in before Trix. Miss Severn pushed to the front
+and was nearest to the master of ceremonies.
+
+"Give me a chance!" she cried. "You're going to lose your old gold
+piece."
+
+"It's a perfectly new one, Trixie," whispered somebody, shrilly. "It
+isn't old at all!"
+
+Without a word the witch beckoned the girl inside the booth. The flap of
+it dropped and they were hidden. The light was cast from a dim, green
+globe hung at the apex of the little tent. It made a ghostly glow over
+all inside.
+
+"Advance!" whispered the witch, with lips close to Trix Severn's pretty
+ear. "Advance, neophyte! The gold piece is yours for the taking. But
+only she who has no guilt and treachery upon her heart may seize the
+shining coin. _If you are faithful to your friends, take the coin!_"
+
+Trix started and her pretty face was cast in an angry look as she
+glanced aside at the masquerader. But she made no reply save by her
+out-thrust hand which dived into the water.
+
+Instantly the crowd outside heard a piercing scream from Trix Severn.
+She burst out of the tent, and, amid the laughter and jeers of her
+comrades, sought shelter in another room.
+
+"Did you get the gold piece, Trix?" cried some.
+
+"Divide with a fellow, will you?"
+
+"Say! there are more tricks than are dreamed of in your philosophy, eh,
+Trix?" gibed Eva Larry.
+
+And for that atrocious pun she was pushed forward to the tent, to be the
+next victim on the altar of the boys' perfectly harmless, though
+surprising joke.
+
+Nobody was able to pick the gold piece out of the pan of water, thanks
+to the electric battery that Joe Eldred had so skillfully connected with
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER
+
+
+"You scared her," declared Agnes to Neale, on the way home from the
+party.
+
+"Scared who?" demanded the boy, with apparent innocence.
+
+"Trix."
+
+"What if I did? I scared a lot of them."
+
+"But you scared her worse than all the rest," Agnes said. "She was
+crying in the bedroom upstairs. Lucy told me."
+
+"Crying because she couldn't get that five-dollar gold piece," chuckled
+Neale. "I wish I could believe they were tears of repentance."
+
+"Who made you a judge, Neale O'Neil?" asked Ruth, with asperity.
+
+"I'm not. Never was in politics," grinned the boy.
+
+"Smartie!" said Agnes.
+
+"Trix was judged by her own conscience," Neale added soberly. "I never
+said a word to her about that letter."
+
+"What letter do you mean?" demanded Ruth.
+
+But Neale shut his lips on that. When Ruth was not by, however, he
+admitted to Agnes that he had borrowed from Mr. Marks the letter that
+gentleman had received in reference to the strawberry raid. Neale was
+going to show it to Mr. Bob Buckham.
+
+"I told Mr. Marks there was some funny business about it. I knew Mr.
+Buckham never intended to report you girls to the principal. He didn't
+even know your names. Mr. Marks told me to find out about it and report
+to him. He knows that I once worked for Bob Buckham and that he's a
+friend of mine."
+
+"Oh, Neale!" groaned Agnes. "That won't help me."
+
+"Help you to what?"
+
+"To get a chance to act in the play," sighed the girl. "I did take the
+berries! So did the other girls. We deserve our punishment. Mr. Marks
+won't change his mind."
+
+But Neale was not altogether sure of that. There were things happening
+just then which pointed to several changes in the character parts of
+_The Carnation Countess_. It was being discovered by the director and
+stage manager that many of the characters should be recast. Some of the
+girls and boys to whom the parts had been allotted could not possibly
+compass them.
+
+This was particularly plain in the case of Innocent Delight and some
+others of the female rôles. Some of the very brightest girls in the high
+school were debarred from taking part in the play because of Mr. Marks'
+ruling against the first basket ball team and some of their friends.
+
+Neale O'Neil determined to see Mr. Bob Buckham as soon as possible.
+Another rehearsal would occur on this Saturday afternoon; so Friday
+evening it was arranged that the interests of the Corner House girls
+should be divided for one Saturday, at least.
+
+Tess and Dot were going to the hospital in the forenoon. Uncle Rufus had
+coaxed many fall flowers into late blooming this year and the little
+girls were to carry great bunches of asters and garden-grown
+chrysanthemums to decorate the children's ward for Thanksgiving, which
+came the very next Thursday.
+
+Ruth had shopping to do and must confer with Mr. Howbridge about a
+Thanksgiving treat for the Meadow Street tenants. "A turkey for each
+family--and perhaps vegetables," she declared. "So many of them are
+foreigners. They have learned to celebrate our Fourth of July--why not
+our Thanksgiving?"
+
+Therefore, it was easy for Neale and Agnes to obtain permission to drive
+out to Strawberry Farm. Neale got a horse and runabout from the
+stableman for whom he occasionally drove, and Agnes was proud, indeed,
+when she came out in her furs and pretty new hat, with the fur-topped
+boots she had just purchased, and stepped into the carriage beside her
+friend.
+
+Tom Jonah looked longingly after them from the yard, but Agnes shook her
+head. "Not to-day, old fellow," she told the good old dog. "We're going
+to travel too fast for you," for the quick-stepping horse was anxious to
+be on the road.
+
+They departed amid the cheers of the whole family--and Sammy Pinkney,
+who threw a big cabbage-stalk after them for good luck and yelled his
+derisive compliments.
+
+"Fresh kid!" muttered Neale.
+
+"I'd like to spank that boy," sighed Agnes. "There never was so bad a
+boy since the world began, I believe!"
+
+"I expect that's what the neighbors said about little Cain and Abel,"
+chuckled Neale, recovering his good-nature at once.
+
+"Well," said Agnes, "Sammy's worse than little Tommy Rooney, who ran
+away from Bloomingsburg to kill Indians."
+
+"Did he kill any?" asked Neale.
+
+"Not here in Milton," Agnes said, laughing. "But he came near getting
+drowned in the canal."
+
+They drove on by the road that led past Lycurgus Billet's. The
+tumbled-down house looked just as forlorn as ever, its broken windows
+stuffed with old hats and gunny-sacks and the like, its broken steps a
+menace to the limbs of those who went in and out.
+
+Mrs. Lycurgus was picking up chips around the chopping-block and was not
+averse to stopping for a chat. "No, Lycurgus ain't here," she drawled.
+"He's gone huntin'. This yere's the first day the law's off'n deer an'
+Lycurgus 'lows ter git his share of deer-meat. He knows where there's a
+lick," and she chuckled in anticipation of a full larder.
+
+"Sue? Naw, she ain't here nuther. Mrs. Buckham--her that's the
+invalid--has sorter took a fancy ter Sue. She's been a-stoppin' there at
+that Strawberry Farm, right smart now.
+
+"You goin' there? Then you'll likely see her. She likes it right well;
+but she's a wild young 'un. I dunno's she'll stand it for long."
+
+"Don't you miss her?" asked Agnes, as Neale prepared to drive on.
+
+"Miss Sue? My soul!" ejaculated Mrs. Billet, showing a ragged row of
+teeth in a broad smile. "Dunno how I _could_ miss one young 'un! There's
+a-plenty others."
+
+At the Buckham farm little Sue Billet was much in evidence. She was
+tagging right after the old farmer all the time, and it was plain whose
+companionship it was that made the half-wild child contented away from
+home.
+
+The farmer was hearty in his greeting, and he insisted that the visitors
+go right in "to see marm."
+
+"Wipe yer feet on the door-mat," advised the old man. "Me and Sue
+haster, or else Posy'll put us out. I never did see a gal with sech a
+mania for cleanin' floors as that Posy gal."
+
+The invalid in her bower of bright-colored wools welcomed Agnes warmly.
+"Here's my pretty one! I declare you are a cure for sore eyes," she
+cried. "And how are the sisters? Why didn't they come to-day?"
+
+Neale remained outside to speak with Mr. Buckham for some minutes. The
+old farmer, with his silver-bowed spectacles on his nose looked hard at
+the letter Neale had brought.
+
+"Not that I kin read it," he said ruefully, "or could if it was writ in
+letters of gold. But I kin see it ain't marm's hand of write--no, sir."
+
+"I was very sure of that," Neale said quickly. "Let me read it to you,
+sir. You see it's written on your own stationery."
+
+"I see that," admitted the farmer. "Oh, yes; I see that."
+
+Neale began:
+
+    "'_Mr. Curtis G. Marks_,
+        "'_Principal Milton High School._
+
+    "'DEAR SIR:  Mr. Robert Buckham wishes to bring to your attention
+    the fact that on May twenty-third last, a party of your girls,
+    including the members of the first basket ball team, on their
+    way home from Fleeting, were delayed by an accident to the car,
+    right beside his strawberry field; and that the girls named
+    below entered the field without permission, and picked and ate a
+    quantity of berries, beside destroying some vines. Mr. Buckham
+    wishes to call your serious attention to the matter and may yet
+    take steps to punish the culprits himself.'"
+
+Then followed the names of all the girls whom Mr. Marks considered it
+his duty to punish. There was no signature at all to the letter; but it
+purported to come from the old farmer, and to be written at his
+instance.
+
+"I dunno as ye kin call it forgery," muttered Mr. Buckham; "but it's
+blamed mean--that's what it is! It gives me a black eye with these gals,
+and the gals a black eye with the teacher. Sho! it's a real mean thing
+to do."
+
+"But who did it?" demanded Neale, earnestly.
+
+"Ya-as! That's the question," returned Mr. Bob Buckham. "If we knowed
+that----"
+
+"Are you sure we don't know it?"
+
+The old man eyed him contemplatively. "You suspect somebody," he said.
+
+"Well! and so do you," declared the boy, warmly. "Only you've got some
+evidence, and we haven't."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"You must know who would have a chance to get your letter paper and
+write such a letter as that?"
+
+"Humph!" repeated the old man, reflectively.
+
+"I don't know how that girl came to be out here. But you know you saw
+her--and like enough she spoke of the strawberry raid--and she went in
+to see Mrs. Buckham--and she saw the writing paper----"
+
+All the time that Neale was drawling out these phrases he was watching
+the old farmer's grim face keenly for some flicker of emotion. But it
+was just as expressionless as a face of stone.
+
+"It's fine weather, we're having, Neale," said Mr. Buckham, finally.
+
+At that the boy lost his temper. "I tell you it's a mean shame!" he
+cried. "Poor Aggie can't act in that old play, and she wants to. And
+Trix Severn is spoiling the whole show, and she oughtn't to be allowed
+to. And if she was the cause of making all these other girls get
+punished, she ought to be shown up."
+
+"Let's see that letter agin, son," said the old man, quietly. He peered
+at the handwriting intently for a minute. Then he said, with perfectly
+sober lips but a twinkle in his eye:
+
+"Ye sure marm didn't write it?"
+
+"Just as sure as I can be! I know her handwriting," cried Neale. "You're
+fooling."
+
+"So all handwriting don't look alike, heh?" was the farmer's final
+comment, and he returned the letter to the boy's care.
+
+Neale looked startled for a moment. Then he folded the letter carefully
+and put it away in his pocket. On the way home he said to Agnes:
+
+"Say, Aggie!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Can you get me a sample of Trix Severn's handwriting?"
+
+"_What?_" gasped Agnes.
+
+"Just something she's written--a note, or an exercise, or something."
+
+Agnes stared at him in growing horror. "Neale O'Neil!" she cried.
+
+"Well?" he demanded gruffly.
+
+"You're going to try to put that letter upon her--you are going to try
+to prove that she made all this trouble."
+
+"Well! what if?" he asked, still without looking at her.
+
+"Never! Never in this world will I let you do it," said Agnes, firmly.
+
+"Huh! And I was only trying to see if there wasn't some way out of the
+mess for you," said Neale, as though offended.
+
+"I wouldn't want to get out of it--even if you could help me--at such a
+price. Because _she_ may have been a tale-bearer, do you think _I'd_ be
+one?"
+
+"Not even to get a chance to act in _The Carnation Countess_?" asked
+Neale, with a sudden smile.
+
+"No! And--and _that_ wouldn't help me, anyway!" she added, quite
+despairingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+MISS PEPPERILL AND THE GRAY LADY
+
+
+Tess and Dot Kenway set off for the hospital in good season that
+Saturday morning, their arms laden with great bunches of flowers, all
+wrapped about with layers of tissue paper, for the November air was
+keen.
+
+On the corner of High Street, the wind being somewhat blusterous, Dot
+managed to run into somebody; but she clung to the flowers nevertheless.
+
+"Hoity-toity!" ejaculated a rather sharp voice. "Where are you going,
+young lady?"
+
+"To--to the horsepistol," declared the muffled voice of the
+matter-of-fact Dot.
+
+"Hospital! hospital!" gasped Tess, in horror. "This is Miss Pepperill."
+
+"Ah! So it is Theresa and her little sister," said the teacher. "Humph!
+A child who mispronounces the word so badly as that will never get to
+the institution itself without help. Let me carry those flowers,
+Dorothy. I am going past the Women's and Children's Hospital myself."
+
+"Thank her, Dot!" hissed Tess. "It's very kind of her."
+
+"You can carry the flowers, Miss Pepperill," said the smallest Corner
+House girl, "if you want to. But I want Mrs. Eland to know I brought
+some as well as Tess."
+
+The red-haired lady laughed--rather a short, brusk laugh, that might
+have been a cough.
+
+"So you are going to see your Mrs. Eland, are you, Theresa?" she asked
+her pupil.
+
+"Yes, Miss Pepperill. We always see Mrs. Eland when we go to the
+hospital," said Tess. "But we like to see the children, too."
+
+"Yes," said Dot; "there is a boy there with only one arm. Do you suppose
+they'll grow a new one on him?"
+
+That time Miss Pepperill _did_ laugh in good earnest; but Tess
+despaired. "Goodness, Dot! they don't grow arms on folks."
+
+"Why not?" demanded the inquisitive Dorothy. "Our teacher was reading to
+us how new claws grow on lobsters when they lose 'em fighting. But
+perhaps that boy wasn't fighting when he lost his arm."
+
+"For pity's sake! I should hope not," observed Miss Pepperill. In a
+minute they came in sight of the hospital, and she added, in her very
+tartest tone of voice: "I shall go in with you, Theresa. I should like
+to meet your Mrs. Eland."
+
+"Yes, ma'am," Tess replied dutifully, but Dot whispered:
+
+"I don't like the way she says 'Theresa' to you, Tess. It--it sounds
+just as though you were going to have a tooth pulled."
+
+Miss Pepperill had stalked ahead with Dot's bunch of flowers. Dot did
+not much mind having the flowers carried for her; but she did not
+propose letting anybody at the hospital make a mistake as to who donated
+that particular bouquet. As they went in she said to the porter, who was
+quite well acquainted with the two smallest Corner House girls by this
+time:
+
+"Good morning, Mr. John. _We_ are bringing some flowers for the
+children's ward, Tess and me. That lady with--with the light hair, is
+carrying mine."
+
+Fortunately the red-haired school teacher did not hear this observation
+on the part of Dot.
+
+Half-way down the corridor, Mrs. Eland chanced to come out of one of the
+offices to meet the school teacher, face to face. "Oh! I beg your
+pardon," said the little, gray lady--for she dressed in that hue in the
+house as well as on the street. "Did you wish to see me?"
+
+The matron was small and plump; the teacher was tall and lean. The rosy,
+pleasant face of Mrs. Eland could not have been put to a greater
+contrast than with the angular and grim countenance of the bespectacled
+Miss Pepperill.
+
+The latter seemed, for the moment, confused. She was not a person easily
+disturbed in any situation, it would seem; but she was almost bashful as
+the little matron confronted her.
+
+"I--I---- Really, are you Mrs. Eland?" stammered the school teacher.
+
+"Yes," said the quietly smiling gray lady.
+
+"I--I have heard Theresa, here, speak so much of you----" She actually
+fell back upon Tess for support! "Theresa! introduce me to Mrs. Eland,"
+she commanded.
+
+"Oh, yes, Mrs. Eland," said the cordial Tess. "I wanted you to meet Miss
+Pepperill. You know--she's my teacher."
+
+"Oh! who wanted you to learn the succession of the rulers of England?"
+said Mrs. Eland, laughing, with a sweet, mellow tone.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. The sovereigns of England," Tess said.
+
+"Of course!" Mrs. Eland added:
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+      Then William, his son.'"
+
+"That old rhyme!" Miss Pepperill said, hastily, recovering herself
+somewhat. "You taught it to Theresa?"
+
+"I wrote it out for her," confessed Mrs. Eland. "I could never forget
+it. I learned it when I was a very little girl."
+
+"Indeed?" said Miss Pepperill, almost gasping the ejaculation. "So did
+I."
+
+"That was some time ago," Mrs. Eland said, in her gentle way. "My mother
+taught me."
+
+"Oh! did she?" exclaimed the other lady.
+
+"Yes. She was an English woman. She had been a governess herself in
+England."
+
+"Indeed!" Again the red-haired teacher almost barked the expression.
+She seemed to labor under some strong emotion. Tess noted the strange
+change in Miss Pepperill's usual manner as she spoke to the matron.
+
+"I think it must have been my mother who taught me," the teacher said,
+in the same jerky way. "I'm not sure. Or--perhaps--I picked it up from
+hearing it taught to somebody else.
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+      Then William, his son,----'
+
+Not easily forgotten when once learned."
+
+"Very true," Mrs. Eland said quietly. "I believe my little sister
+learned it listening to mother and me saying it over and over."
+
+"Ah! yes," Miss Pepperill observed. "Your sister? I suppose much younger
+than you?"
+
+"Oh, no; only about four years younger," said Mrs. Eland, sadly. "But I
+lost her when we were both very young."
+
+"Oh! ah!" was Miss Pepperill's abrupt comment. "Death is sad--very sad,"
+and she shook her head.
+
+At the moment somebody spoke to the matron and called her away.
+Otherwise she might have stopped to explain that her sister had been
+actually lost, and that she had no knowledge as to whether she were dead
+or alive.
+
+The red-haired teacher and the two little Corner House girls went on to
+the children's ward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A THANKSGIVING SKATING PARTY
+
+
+The rehearsal of _The Carnation Countess_ that afternoon went most
+dreadfully.
+
+"It really is a shame!" chuckled Neale to Agnes, as he sat beside her
+for a few minutes after the boys acquitted themselves very well in their
+part. "It really is a shame," he went on, "what some of you girls can do
+to a part when it comes to acting. Talk about Hamlet's father being
+murdered to make a Roman holiday!"
+
+"Hush, you ridiculous boy! That isn't the quotation at all," admonished
+Agnes.
+
+"No? Well, Hamlet's father was murdered, wasn't he?"
+
+"I prefer to believe him a mythical character," said Agnes, primly.
+
+"At any rate, something as bad will happen to you, Neale O'Neil, if you
+revile the girls of Milton High," declared Eva Larry, who was near
+enough to hear the boy's comment. "Oh, dear me! I believe I could make
+something of that part of Cheerful Grigg, myself. Rose Carey is a
+regular stick!"
+
+"Hear! hear!" breathed Neale, soulfully. "I'm sorry for Professor
+Ware."
+
+"Well! he gave them the parts," snapped Eva. "I'm not sorry for him!"
+
+The musical director was a patient man; but he saw the play threatened
+with ruin by the stupidity of a few. If his voice grew sharp and his
+manner impatient before the rehearsal was over, there was little wonder.
+
+The choruses, and even the little folks' parts, went splendidly--with
+snap and vigor. Some of the bigger girls walked through their rôles as
+though they were in a trance.
+
+"I declare I should expect more animation and a generally better
+performance from marionettes," cried the despairing professor.
+
+Mr. Marks came in, saw how things were going, and whispered a few words
+to Professor Ware. The latter fairly threw up his hands.
+
+"I give it up for to-day," he cried. "You all act like a set of puppets.
+Pray, pray, young ladies! try to get into the spirit of your parts by
+next Friday. Otherwise, I shall be tempted to recommend that the whole
+play be given up. We do not want to go before the Milton public and make
+ourselves ridiculous."
+
+Neale said to Agnes as he walked home with her: "Why don't you learn the
+part of Innocent Delight? I bet you couldn't do it so much better than
+Trix, after all."
+
+She looked at him with scorn. "Learn it?" she repeated. "I know it by
+heart--and all the other girl's parts, too. I've acted them all out in
+my room before the mirror." She laughed a little ruefully. "Lots of good
+it does me, too! And Ruth says I will have to sleep in another room, all
+by myself, if I don't stop it.
+
+"If I couldn't do the part of Innocent Delight better than Trix
+Severn----"
+
+She left the remainder of the observation to his imagination.
+
+The Thanksgiving recess was to last only from Wednesday afternoon till
+the following Monday morning. Friday and Saturday would be taken up with
+rehearsals--mostly because of the atrociously bad acting of some of the
+girls.
+
+The holiday itself, however, was free. Dinner was to be a joyous affair
+at the old Corner House. There were but two guests expected: Mr.
+Howbridge and Neale. Mr. Howbridge, their uncle's executor, and the
+Kenway sisters' guardian, was a bachelor, and he felt a deep interest in
+the Corner House girls. Of course, Agnes begged to have Neale come.
+
+In the Stower tenements in Meadow Street there was great rejoicing, too.
+Mr. Howbridge's own automobile had taken around the Thanksgiving baskets
+and the lawyer's clerk delivered them and made a brief speech at each
+presentation. The Corner House girls could not attend, for they were too
+busy in school and (at least, three of them) with their parts in the
+play. But Sadie Goronofsky reported the affair to Tess in these
+expressive words:
+
+"Say! you'd oughter seen my papa's wife and the kids. You'd think they'd
+never seen anything to eat before--an' we always has a goose Passover
+week. My! it was fierce! But there was so much in that basket that it
+made 'em all fair nutty. You'd oughter seen 'em!"
+
+Mrs. Kranz, the "delicatessen lady," as Dot called her, and Joe Maroni,
+helped fill the baskets. They were the two "rich tenants" on the Stower
+estate, and the example of the Corner House girls in generosity had its
+good effect upon the lonely German woman and the voluble Italian
+fruiterer.
+
+There were other needy people whom the Corner House girls remembered at
+this season with substantial gifts. Petunia Blossom, and her shiftless
+husband and growing family, looked to "gran'pap's missus" for their
+Thanksgiving fowl. And this year Seneca Sprague came in for a share of
+the Corner House bounty.
+
+Since the fatal day when Billy Bumps had secured a share of the
+prophet's generous thatch, Ruth had felt she owed Seneca something. The
+boys plagued him as he walked the streets in his flapping linen duster
+and broken straw hat; and older people were unkind enough to make fun of
+him.
+
+Seneca followed the scriptural command to the Jews regarding swine--and
+more, for he ate no meat of any kind. But the plump and luscious pig was
+indeed an abomination to Seneca.
+
+One day when Ruth went to market she saw a crowd of the market
+loiterers teasing Seneca Sprague, the man having ventured among them to
+peddle his tracts.
+
+The girl saw a smeary-aproned young butcher slip up behind the old man
+and drop a pig's tail into one of the pockets of his flapping duster.
+
+To the bystanders it was a harmless joke; to Seneca, Ruth knew, it would
+mean infamy and contamination. He would be months purging his conscience
+of the stain of "touching the unclean thing," as he expressed it.
+
+The girl went up to Seneca and spoke to him. She had a heavy basket of
+provisions and she asked the prophet to carry it home for her, which he
+did with good grace.
+
+When they arrived at the old Corner House Ruth told him if he would
+remove the linen coat she would sew up a tear in the back for him; and
+in this way she smuggled the "porker's appendage," as Neale O'Neil
+called it, out of the prophet's pocket.
+
+"And you ought to see the inside of that shack of his down on Bimberg's
+wharf," Neale O'Neil said. "I got a peep at it one day. You know it's an
+old office Bimberg used to use before he moved up town, and it's
+attached to his store-shed, and at the far end.
+
+"Seneca's got a little stove, and a cupboard, a cot to sleep on, a chair
+to sit in, and the walls are lined with bookshelves filled with old
+musty books."
+
+"Books!" exclaimed Agnes. "Does he read?"
+
+"Why, in his way, he's quite erudite," declared Neale, smiling. "He
+reads Josephus and the Apocrypha, and believes them quite as much
+inspired as the rabbinical books of the Old Testament, I believe. Most
+of his other books relate to the prophetical writings of the old
+patriarchs.
+
+"He believes that the Pilgrims were descended from the lost tribes of
+Israel and that God allowed them to people this country and raise up a
+nation which should be a refuge and example to all the peoples of the
+earth."
+
+"Why! I think that is really a wonderful thought," Ruth said.
+
+"He's strong on patriotism; and his belief in regard to the divine
+direction of George Washington does nobody any harm. If everybody
+believed as Seneca does, we would all have a greater love of country,
+that's sure."
+
+Ruth sent down to the little hut on the river dock a basket of such good
+things as she knew Seneca Sprague would appreciate.
+
+"I'd love to send him warm underwear," she sighed.
+
+"And a cap and mittens," Agnes put in. "He gives me the shivers when I
+see him pass along this cold weather, with his duster flapping."
+
+"Thank goodness he has put on socks and wears carpet slippers," said
+Ruth. "He believes it is unhealthy to wear many clothes. And he is
+healthy enough--goodness knows!"
+
+"But clothes are _awfully_ comfortable," said the luxury-loving Dot.
+
+"Right you are, Dottums," agreed Agnes. "And I'd rather be comfortable
+than so terribly healthy."
+
+The weather had become intensely cold during the past fortnight. Steady
+frost had chained the river and ponds. There had been no snow, but there
+was fine skating by Thanksgiving.
+
+On the morning of the holiday the two older Corner House girls and Neale
+O'Neil set off to meet a party of their school friends for a skating
+frolic on the canal and river. They met at the Park Lock, and skated
+down the solidly frozen canal to where it debouched into the river.
+
+Milton young folks were out in full force on this Thanksgiving morning,
+despite the keen wind blowing from the northwest. Jack Frost nipped
+fingers and toes; but there were huge bonfires burning here and there
+along the bank, and at these the skaters could go ashore to warm
+themselves when they felt too cold.
+
+River traffic, of course, was over for the season. The docks were for
+the most part deserted. Some reckless small boys built a fire of
+shavings and old barrels right on Bimberg's dock.
+
+When the first tar-barrel began to crackle, the sparks flew. Older
+skaters saw the danger; but when they rushed to put the fire out, it was
+beyond control. The Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil were among the
+first to see the danger. Seneca Sprague's shack was then afire.
+
+"Never mind. The old man's up town," cried one boy. "If it burns up it
+won't be much loss."
+
+"And it _will_ burn before the fire department gets here," said one of
+the girls.
+
+"Poor Seneca! I expect his poor possessions are treasures to him," said
+Ruth.
+
+"Cracky!" ejaculated Neale, suddenly, as the flames mounted higher.
+"What about the poor old duffer's books?"
+
+"Oh, Neale!" gasped Ruth. "And they mean so much to him."
+
+"Pshaw!" observed one of the other boys. "They're not really worth
+anything, are they?"
+
+"Whether they are or not, they are valuable to Seneca," Ruth repeated.
+
+"Well, goodness!" was the ejaculation of a third boy. "I wouldn't risk
+going into that shack if they were worth a million. See! the whole end
+of it is ablaze!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+NEALE'S ENDLESS CHAIN
+
+
+Skaters from both up and down the river augmented the crowd of
+spectators gathered along the shore to watch the fire. The fire-bells
+were clanging uptown, but as yet the first machine had not appeared. The
+firemen would have to attack the blaze from the street end of the dock,
+anyway.
+
+"Father's got goods stored in the shed," said Clarence Bimberg, "and
+they'll try to save them. I guess Seneca's old shack will have to go."
+
+"And all those books you told us about, Neale," Agnes cried.
+
+"Wish I could get 'em out for him!" declared the generous boy.
+
+"Pshaw! I can tell you how to do it. But you wouldn't dare," chuckled
+Clarence.
+
+"How?" demanded Neale.
+
+"You wouldn't dare!"
+
+"Well--mebbe not. But tell me anyhow."
+
+"There's an old trap-door in the dock under that office-shack."
+
+"You don't mean it, Clarry?"
+
+"Yes, there is. I know it's there. But it mightn't be open now--I mean
+maybe it's nailed down. I don't believe Seneca knows it's there. The
+boards just match."
+
+"Let's try it!" exclaimed Neale.
+
+"Oh, Neale, you wouldn't!" gasped Agnes, who had heard the conversation.
+
+"Of course he wouldn't," scoffed Clarence. "He's only bluffing. Father
+used to let us play around the old shack before Seneca got it to live
+in. And I found the trap. But I never said anything about it."
+
+Neale looked serious, but he said: "Just show me how to reach it,
+Clarry."
+
+"Why," said Clarence, "the ice is solid underneath the wharf. You can
+see it is. Skate right under, if you want," and he laughed again,
+believing Neale in fun.
+
+"Show me," said the white-haired boy.
+
+"Not much I won't! Why, the wharf boards are afire already, and the
+sparks will soon be raining down there."
+
+"Show me," demanded Neale. "If there _is_ a trap there----"
+
+"Oh, Neale!" Agnes cried again. "Don't!"
+
+"Don't you be a little goose, Aggie," said the earnest boy. "Come on,
+Clarry."
+
+"Oh, I don't want to," said the other boy, seeing that Neale was in
+earnest now. "We'll get burned."
+
+Neale grabbed his hand and whirled him around, and they shot in toward
+the burning wharf, whether Clarence would or no!
+
+"Hey, boys, keep away from there!" shouted a man from the next dock.
+"You'll get burned."
+
+"Oh, Neale, come back!" wailed Agnes.
+
+"You hear, Neale O'Neil?" gasped Clarence, struggling in the bigger
+boy's grasp. "_I don't want to go!_"
+
+"Show me where the trap is," said the boy who had been brought up in a
+circus. "Then you can run if you like. I'm not afraid."
+
+"I am!" squealed Clarence Bimberg.
+
+But he was forced by the stronger Neale to skate under the burning
+wharf. They bumped about for half a minute among the piles and the
+broken ice. They could hear the flames crackling overhead, and the smoke
+puffed in between the planks. The black ice was solid and there was
+light enough to see fairly well.
+
+"There! There!" shrieked the frightened Clarence. "You can see it now,
+Neale! Let me go!"
+
+It did not look like a trap-door to Neale. Yet some short, rotting steps
+led up out of the frozen water to the flooring of the old wharf. The
+moment he essayed to climb these steps on his skates, Clarence broke
+away and shot out from under the burning dock.
+
+Neale was too determined to reach the interior of Seneca Sprague's shack
+to save the old prophet's books, to bother about the defection of his
+schoolmate. If Joe Eldred had only been at hand, _he_ would have stood
+by!
+
+"Oh, Neale! can you open it?" quavered a voice behind and below him.
+
+Neale almost tumbled backward from the steps, he was so amazed. He
+looked down to see Agnes' rosy, troubled face turned up to his gaze.
+
+"For pity's sake! get out of here, Aggie," he begged.
+
+"I won't!" she returned, tartly.
+
+"You'll get burned."
+
+"So will you."
+
+"But aren't you afraid?" the boy demanded, in growing wonder.
+
+"Of course I am!" she gasped. "But I can stand it if _you_ can."
+
+"Oh, _me_!"
+
+"Hurry up!" cried Agnes. "I can help carry out some of the books."
+
+Meanwhile Neale had been pounding on the boards overhead. Suddenly two
+of them lifted a little.
+
+"I've got it!" yelled Neale, in delight, and above the crackling of the
+flames and the confusion of other sounds without.
+
+He burst up the rickety, old trap with his shoulders, and was met
+immediately by a stifling cloud of smoke. The interior of Seneca
+Sprague's shack was filled with the pungent vapor, although the flames
+were still on the outside.
+
+"Don't get burned, Neale!" cried Agnes, coughing below from a rift of
+smoke, as the boy climbed into the little room.
+
+"You better go away," returned Neale, in a muffled voice.
+
+"I'll take an armful of books when I do go--if you'll hand 'em down to
+me," cried his girl chum.
+
+"Oh, Aggie! if you get hurt Ruth will never forgive me," cried Neale,
+really troubled about the Corner House girl's presence in this place of
+danger.
+
+"I tell you to give me some of those books, Neale O'Neil!" cried Agnes.
+"If you don't I'll come up in there and get them."
+
+"Oh, don't be in such a hurry!" returned Neale.
+
+He came to the smoky opening with his arms full and began to descend the
+steps, which creaked under his weight. He slipped on the skates which he
+had had no time to remove, and came down with a crash, sitting upon the
+lowest step. But he did not loose his hold on the books.
+
+"Oh, Neale! are you hurt?" Agnes demanded.
+
+"Only in my dignity," growled the boy, grimly.
+
+Agnes began to giggle at that; but she grabbed the books from him. "Go
+back and get some more--that's a good boy!" she cried, and, whirling
+about, shot out from under the wharf.
+
+The worried Ruth, who had not seen the first of this adventure, was
+standing near. Agnes deposited the volumes at her sister's feet.
+
+"Look out for them, Ruthie!" Agnes cried. "Neale's going to get them
+all."
+
+With this reckless promise she sped back under the burning wharf. Water
+was pouring upon the goods' shed now, freezing almost as fast as it
+left the hose-pipes, but the firemen had not reached the little shack.
+
+Joe Eldred and some of the other boys reached the scene of Ruth's
+trouble and quickly understood the situation. If Neale O'Neil wanted to
+save Seneca Sprague's books, of course they would help him--not, as Joe
+said, that they "gave a picayune for the crazy old duffer."
+
+"Form a chain, boys! form a chain!" commanded Neale's muffled voice from
+inside the burning shack, when he learned who was below. And this the
+crowd did, passing the armfuls of books back and out from under the
+wharf as fast as Neale could gather them and hand them down.
+
+Agnes found herself put aside when Joe and his comrades got to work. But
+they praised her pluck, nevertheless.
+
+"Those Corner House girls are all right!" was the general comment.
+
+Poor Seneca came running to the end of a neighboring dock and took a
+flying leap--linen duster, carpet slippers, and all--down upon the ice.
+He was determined at first to get to his shack on the wharf, for he did
+not see what the boys were doing for him.
+
+Men in the crowd ran to hold the poor old prophet back from what would
+likely have been his doom. He screamed anathemas upon them until they
+led him to where Ruth stood and showed him the great heap of books. Then
+almost immediately he became calm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CORNER HOUSE THANKSGIVING
+
+
+It was truly a Thanksgiving feast at the old Corner House that day, and
+it was enjoyed to the full by all. Nor was there a table in all Milton
+around which sat a more apparently incongruous company.
+
+At first glance one might have thought that the Corner House girls had
+put forth a special effort to gather together a really fantastical
+company to celebrate the holiday. Uncle Rufus, at least, had never
+served quite so odd an assortment of guests during all the years he had
+been in Mr. Peter Stower's employ.
+
+At one end of the table the old Scotch housekeeper presided, in a fresh
+cap and apron. Her hard, rosy face looked as though it had received an
+extra polishing with the huck towel on the kitchen roller.
+
+At the far end of the long board, covered with the best old damask the
+house afforded, and laid with the heavy, sterling plate that Unc' Rufus
+tended so lovingly, and the cut glass of old-fashioned pattern, was
+silver-haired Mr. Howbridge. He was a man very precise in his dress,
+given to the niceties of the toilet in every particular. He wore
+rimless glasses perched on his aristocratic beak of a nose, a well
+cared-for mustache much darker than his hair, and had very piercing
+eyes.
+
+On his right was prim Aunt Sarah--Aunt Sarah, who never seemed to belong
+to the family, who lived so self-centered an existence, but who was sure
+to have her meddling finger in everything that went on in the old Corner
+House, especially if it was desired that she should not.
+
+Aunt Sarah glared across the table at a tall, lean, ascetic-looking man
+in a rusty, old-fashioned, black, tail coat that was a world too wide
+for him across the shoulders, and with his sleek, long hair parted very
+carefully in the middle, and falling below the high collar of the coat.
+
+Those who had never seen Seneca Sprague save in his flapping duster and
+straw hat, would scarcely have recognized him now.
+
+Ruth, after the fire, when the prophet had been made to understand that
+all his possessions for which he really cared were saved, had induced
+him to come home with them to eat the Thanksgiving feast.
+
+"It is fitting that we should give thanks--yea, verily," agreed Seneca,
+his mind rather more muddled than usual by the excitement of the fire.
+"I saw the armies of Armageddon advancing with flame-tipped spears and
+flights of flashing arrows. They were all--all--aimed to overwhelm me.
+But their hands were stayed--they could not prevail against me. Thank
+you, young man," he added, briskly, to Neale O'Neil. "You have a pretty
+wit, and by it you have saved my library--my books that could not be
+duplicated. I have the only Apocrypha extant with notes by the great
+Swedenborg. Do you know the life of George Washington, young man?"
+
+"Pretty well, sir, thank you," said Neale, gravely.
+
+"It is well. Study it. That great being who sired our glorious country,
+is yet to come again. And he will purge the nation with fire and cleanse
+it with hyssop. Verily, it shall come to pass in that day----"
+
+"But we mustn't keep Mrs. MacCall waiting for us, Mr. Sprague," Ruth had
+interrupted him by saying. "You can tell us all about it later."
+
+They had bundled him into a carriage near the burned dock, to hide his
+torn duster and wild appearance, and had brought him to the old Corner
+House--Ruth and Agnes and Neale. There he was soon quieted. Neale helped
+him remove the traces of the struggle he had had with those who kept him
+from going into the fire, and likewise helped him dress for dinner.
+
+Uncle Peter Stower's ancient wardrobe furnished the most of Seneca's
+holiday garb. "Mr. Stower was a meaty man," the prophet said, in some
+scorn. "His girth should have been upon his conscience, for verily he
+lived for the greater part of his life on the fat of the land. His
+latter days were lean ones, it is true; but they could not absolve him
+from his youthful gastronomic sins."
+
+Ruth had some fear that the odd, old fellow might make trouble at the
+table; but Seneca Sprague had not always lived the untamed life he now
+did. He had been well brought up, and had associated with the best
+families of Milton and the county in his younger days.
+
+Mr. Howbridge was surprised to find Seneca Sprague sitting in the
+ancient parlor of the old Corner House when he arrived--an unfriendly
+room which was seldom opened by the girls. But the lawyer shook hands
+with Seneca and told him how glad he was to hear that his library had
+been saved from the fire.
+
+"One may say by a miracle," the prophet declared solemnly. "As Elijah
+was fed by the raven in the wilderness, so was my treasure cared for in
+time of stress."
+
+He talked after that quite reasonably, and when the girls in their
+pretty dresses fluttered to their seats about the table, and with Neale
+O'Neil filled them all, the company being complete, Ruth, looked to
+Seneca to ask a blessing.
+
+His reverent grace, spoken humbly, was most fitting. Linda opened the
+door. A great breath of warm, food-laden air rushed in. Uncle Rufus
+appeared, proudly bearing the great turkey, browned beautifully and
+fairly bursting with tenderness and--dressing!
+
+"Oh-ee!" whispered ecstatically, the smallest Corner House girl. "He
+looks so _noble_! Do--do you s'pose, Tess, that it will _hurt_ him when
+Uncle Rufus carves?"
+
+"My goodness!" exclaimed Neale, "it will hurt us if he doesn't carve the
+turk. I couldn't imagine any greater punishment than to sit here and
+taste the other good things and renege on that handsome bird."
+
+But Seneca Sprague did not hear this comment. He ate heartily of the
+plentiful supply of vegetables; but he would not taste the turkey or the
+suet pudding.
+
+It was a merry feast. They sat long over it. Uncle Rufus set the great
+candelabra on the table and by the wax-light they cracked nuts and drank
+sweet cider, and the younger ones listened to the stories of their
+elders.
+
+Even Aunt Sarah livened up. "My soul and body!" she croaked, with rather
+a sour smile, it must be confessed, "I wonder what Peter Stower would
+say to see me sitting here. Humph! He couldn't keep me out of my home
+forever, could he?"
+
+But nobody made any reply to that statement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+CLOUDS AND SUNSHINE
+
+
+The day following Thanksgiving that year would ever be known as "Black
+Friday" in the annals of Milton school history. And it came about like
+this.
+
+Professor Ware had given notice the Saturday previous that there would
+be two rehearsals on that day of _The Carnation Countess_. The morning
+rehearsal was for the choruses, the dance numbers and tableaux, and
+especially for those halting Thespians whom the professor called "lame
+ducks"--those who had such difficulty in learning their parts.
+
+The afternoon rehearsal was the first full rehearsal--every actor, both
+amateur and professional, must be present, and the play was to be run
+through from the first note of the overture to the final curtain. For
+the first time the scholars would hear the orchestral arrangement of the
+music score.
+
+And right at the start--at the beginning of the morning rehearsal--the
+musical director was balked. Innocent Delight was not present.
+
+"What's the matter with that girl?" demanded the irate professor of
+everybody in general and nobody in particular. "Was Thanksgiving too
+much for her? I expected some of you boys would perform gastronomic
+feats to make the angels tremble. But girls!"
+
+"The Severns went down to Pleasant Cove over Thanksgiving. They haven't
+got home yet," announced a neighbor of the missing Trix.
+
+"What? Gone out of town? And after all I said about the importance of
+to-day's rehearsals!" exclaimed the director. "This is no time for a
+part as important as that of Innocent Delight to be read."
+
+But they had to go on with the play in that halting manner. Trix
+Severn's lines were read; but her absence spoiled the action of each
+scene in which she should have appeared.
+
+"But goodness knows!" snapped Eva Larry, who, with the rest of the
+"penitent sisterhood," as Neale called them, watched the rehearsal,
+"Trix will spoil the play anyway. But won't she get it when she comes
+this afternoon?"
+
+The play halted on to the bitter end. The amateur performers grew tired;
+the director grew fussy. His sarcastic comments toward the end did not
+seem to inspire the young folk to a spirited performance of their parts.
+They were discouraged.
+
+"We should announce this on the bills as a burlesque of _The Carnation
+Countess_," declared Professor Ware, "and as nothing else. Milton people
+will laugh us out of town."
+
+The girls and teachers in the audience realized even better than the
+performers just how bad it was. The little folk were excused, for they
+had all done well, while the director tried his best to whip the others
+into some sort of shape for the afternoon session.
+
+"I know very well that Madam Shaw will refuse to sing her part with a
+background of such blunderers!" exclaimed Professor Ware, bitterly, at
+the last. "Nor will the other professionals be willing to risk their
+reputations, and the play itself, in such a performance. Our time has
+gone for nothing. And if Innocent Delight does not appear for the
+afternoon performance----"
+
+His futile threats made little impression upon the girls and boys. They
+were--for the time--exhausted. Ruth went home in tears--although she had
+not drawn one word or look of critical comment from the sharp-spoken
+director. Tess was very solemn, and continued to repeat her part of
+Swiftwing over and over to herself--although she knew it perfectly.
+
+Dot danced along, saying: "Well! I don't care! _I buzzed_ all right--I
+know I did! Buzz! buzz! buzz-z-z-z!"
+
+"Goodness gracious!" ejaculated the nervous Agnes, who felt for them
+all, though not having a thing to do with the play---- "Goodness
+gracious! you were wishing for a 'buzzer,' Dot Kenway. I don't think you
+need one. Nature must have made a mistake and meant you for a bee,
+anyway. I don't see how you ever came to be born into the Kenway family,
+instead of a bee-hive!"
+
+Dot pouted at that, but quickly changed her expression when she saw
+Sammy Pinkney careering along the street like a young whirlwind. Sammy,
+for his sins, had been forbidden to participate in _The Carnation
+Countess_--not that it seemed to trouble him a bit! Anything that
+occurred in the schoolhouse was trial and tribulation to Master Pinkney.
+They could not fool him into believing differently, just by calling it a
+"play!"
+
+"Oh, bully! bully! bully!" he sang, coming along the street in a "hop,
+skip and a jump pace," the better to show his joy. "Oh, Dot! oh, Tess!
+you never can guess what's happened."
+
+"Something _awful_, I just know," said Tess, "or you wouldn't be so
+glad."
+
+"Huh!" grunted Sammy, stopping in the middle of his fantastic dance, and
+glaring at the next to the youngest Corner House girl, "You wait, Tess
+Kenway! You're 'teacher's pet'; but nobody else likes old Pepperpot. I
+guess it will be in the paper to-night, and everybody will be glad of
+it."
+
+"What has happened to Miss Pepperill?" demanded Ruth, seeing into the
+mystery of the boy's speech--at least, for a little way.
+
+"Then you _ain't_ heard?" crowed Sammy.
+
+"And we're not likely to, if you don't hurry up and say something,"
+snapped Agnes.
+
+"Well!" growled Sammy. "She's hurt-ed. She was run down by an automobile
+on High Street. They wanted to take her to the hospital--the one for
+girls and babies, you know----"
+
+"Oh! Mrs. Eland's hospital!" gasped Tess.
+
+"Yep. But she wouldn't go there. They say she made 'em take her to her
+boarding house. And she's hurt bad. And, oh, goody! there won't be any
+school Monday!" cried the young savage, beginning to dance again.
+
+"Don't you fool yourself!" exclaimed Agnes, for Tess was crying frankly,
+and Dot had a finger in her mouth. "Don't you fool yourself, Sammy
+Pinkney! They'll have plenty of time to find a substitute teacher before
+school opens on Monday."
+
+"Oh, they _won't_!" wailed the boy.
+
+"Yes they will. And I hope it will be somebody a good deal worse than
+Miss Pepperill. So there!"
+
+"Oh, but there _ain't_ nobody worse," said Sammy, with conviction, while
+Tess looked at her older sister with tearful surprise.
+
+"Why, Aggie!" she said sorrowfully. "I hope you don't mean that. 'Cause
+I've got to go to school Monday as well as Sammy."
+
+Tess was really much disturbed over the news of Miss Pepperill's injury.
+She would not wait for luncheon but went straight over to the house
+where her teacher boarded, and inquired for her.
+
+The red-haired, sharp-tongued lady was really quite badly hurt. There
+was a compound fracture of the leg, and Dr. Forsyth feared some injury
+to the brain, for Miss Pepperill's head was seriously cut. Tess learned
+that they had been obliged to shave off all the teacher's red, red hair!
+
+"And that's awful!" she told Dot, on her return. "For goodness only
+knows what color it will be when it grows out again. Miss Lippit (she's
+the landlady where Miss Pepperill boards) showed it to me. And it's
+beautiful, long, long hair."
+
+"Mebbe it will come out like Mrs. MacCall's--pepper-and-salt color,"
+said Dot, reflectively. "We haven't got a pepper-and-salt teacher in
+school, have we?"
+
+Such light reflections as this did not please Tess. She really forgot to
+repeat the part of Swiftwing, the hummingbird, in her anxiety about the
+injured Miss Pepperill.
+
+At two o'clock the big rehearsal was called.
+
+"I don't believe I will go back with you," Agnes said, to Ruth. "I can't
+sit there and hear Trix murder that part. Oh, dear!"
+
+"I bet you won't ever eat any more strawberries," chuckled Neale, who
+had come over the back fence of the Corner House premises, that being
+his nearest way to school.
+
+"Don't speak to me of them!" cried Agnes. "A piece of Mrs. MacCall's
+strawberry shortcake would give me the colic, I know--_just to look at
+it_!"
+
+"Oh, you'll get all over that before the strawberry season comes around
+again," her older sister said placidly. "You'd better come, Aggie."
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, yes, Aggie, do come!" urged Neale. "Be a sport. Come and see and
+hear us slaughter _The Carnation Countess_. It'll be more fun than
+moping here alone."
+
+"Well, I'll just cover my eyes and ears when Innocent Delight comes on,"
+Agnes declared.
+
+But Trix was not at the rehearsal. Information from the Severn house
+revealed the fact that the family was still at Pleasant Cove. It was
+evident that Trix's interest in _The Carnation Countess_ had flagged.
+
+Professor Ware gathered the principal professionals around him. His
+speech was serious. They had given the performance in several cities and
+large towns, and had whipped into shape some very unpromising material;
+but the director admitted that he was discouraged with the outlook here.
+
+"I am inclined to say right here and now: Give it up. Not that the
+children as a whole do not average as high in quality as those of other
+schools; but the talent is lacking to take the amateur parts which have
+always been assigned to the girls and boys. The girls' parts are
+especially weak.
+
+"One or two bad parts might be ignored--overlooked by a friendly
+audience. But here is this Innocent Delight girl, not here at all at
+the most important rehearsal we have had. And she is _awful_ in her
+part, anyway; I admit it.
+
+"I was misinformed regarding her. I received a note before the parts
+were given out, stating that she had had much experience in amateur
+theatricals. I do not believe that she ever even acted in parlor
+charades," added the professor, in disgust. "She must have a friendly
+letter-writer who is a professional booster.
+
+"Well, it is too late to change such a part, I am afraid. But to read
+her lines this afternoon, all through the play, will cripple us
+terribly. Even if she is a stick, she can look the part, and walk
+through it."
+
+Somebody tugged at the professor's sleeve. When he looked around he saw
+a flaxen-haired boy with a very eager face.
+
+"I say, Professor! there's a girl here that knows Trix Severn's part
+better than she does herself."
+
+"What's this? Another booster?" demanded the director, sorrowfully.
+
+"Just try her! She knows it all by heart. And she's a blonde."
+
+"Why haven't I seen her before, if she's so good? Is she in the chorus?"
+demanded the doubtful professor.
+
+"She hasn't had any part in the play at all--yet," declared Neale
+O'Neil, banking all upon this chance for Agnes. "But you just try her
+out!"
+
+"She knows the lines?"
+
+"Perfectly," declared the boy, earnestly.
+
+He dared say no more, but he watched the professor's face sharply.
+
+"I don't suppose she can do any more harm than the other," muttered the
+desperate director. "Send her up here, boy. Odd I should not have known
+there was an understudy for Innocent Delight."
+
+Neale went down to the row of seats in which Agnes and a few of the
+"penitent sisterhood" sat. "Say!" he said, grinning at Agnes and
+whispering into her pretty ear, "Now's your chance to show us what you
+can do."
+
+"What do you mean, Neale O'Neil?" she gasped.
+
+"The professor is looking for somebody to walk through Trix's part--just
+for this rehearsal, of course."
+
+"Oh, Neale!" exclaimed the Corner House girl, clasping her hands.
+"They'd never let me do it."
+
+"I don't believe you can," laughed Neale. "But you can try if you want
+to. He told me to send you up to him. There he stands on the stage now."
+
+Agnes rose up giddily. At first she felt that she could not stand.
+Everything seemed whirling about her. Neale, with his past experience of
+the circus in his mind, had an uncanny appreciation of her feelings.
+
+"Buck up!" he whispered. "Don't have stage-fright. You don't have to
+say half the words if you don't want to."
+
+She flashed him a wonderful look. Her vision cleared and she smiled.
+Right there and then Agnes, by some subtle power that had been given her
+when she was born into this world, became changed into the character of
+Innocent Delight--the part which she had already learned so well.
+
+She had sat here throughout each rehearsal and listened to Professor
+Ware's comments and the stage manager's instructions. She knew the cues
+perfectly. There was not an inflection or pose in the part that she had
+not perfected her voice and body in. The other girls watched her move
+toward the stage curiously--Neale with a feeling that he had never
+really known his little friend before.
+
+"Hello, who's this?" asked one of the male professionals when Agnes came
+to the group upon the stage.
+
+"The very type!" breathed Madam Shaw, who had just come upon the
+platform in her street costume. "Professor! why did you not get _this_
+girl for Innocent Delight?"
+
+"I have," returned the director, drily. "You are the one who has studied
+the part?" he asked Agnes.
+
+"Yes, sir," she said, and all her bashfulness left her.
+
+"Open your first scene," commanded the professor, bruskly.
+
+The command might have confused a professional--especially when the
+player had had no opportunity of rehearsing save in secret. But Agnes
+had forgotten everything but the character she was to play. She opened
+her lips and began with a vivacity and dash that made the professionals
+smile and applaud when she was through.
+
+"Wait!" commanded the professor, immediately. "If you can do that as
+well in the play----"
+
+"Oh! but, sir," said Agnes, suddenly coming to herself, and feeling her
+heart and courage sink. "I can't act in the play--not really."
+
+"Why not?" he snapped.
+
+"I am forbidden."
+
+"By whom, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Mr. Marks. We girls of the basket ball team cannot act. It is a
+punishment."
+
+"Indeed?" said the director, grimly. "And are all the girls Mr. Marks
+sees fit to punish at this special time, as able as you are to take
+part?"
+
+"Ye-yes, sir," quavered Agnes.
+
+"Well!" It was a most expressive observation. But the director said
+nothing further about Mr. Marks and his discipline. He merely turned and
+cried:
+
+"Ready for the first act! Clear the stage."
+
+To Madam Shaw he whispered: "Of course, one swallow doesn't make a
+summer."
+
+"But one good, smart girl like this one may come near to saving the day
+for you, Professor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+SWIFTWING, THE HUMMINGBIRD
+
+
+The orchestra burst into a low hum of sweet sounds. Agnes had heard them
+tuning up under the stage for some time; but back in the little hall
+where the amateur performers were gathered in readiness for their cues,
+she had not realized that the orchestra members had taken their places.
+
+Having watched the rehearsals so closely since they began, she could now
+imagine the tall director with his baton, beating time for the opening
+bars.
+
+The overture swelled into the grand march, and then went on, giving a
+taste of the marches, dances, and singing numbers, finally with a crash
+of sound, announcing the moment when the curtain, at the real
+performance, would go up.
+
+"Now!" hissed the stage manager, beckoning on the first chorus.
+
+Innocent Delight was in it. Innocent Delight went up the steps and into
+the wings with the others, as in a dream. As she had not rehearsed with
+the chorus before, she made a little mistake in her position in the
+line; and she failed to keep quite good time in the dancing step.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" gasped Carrie Poole. "Now you're going to spoil it all,
+Aggie Kenway! You'll be worse than Trix, I suppose!"
+
+Agnes merely smiled at her. Nothing could disturb her poise just then.
+_She was going to act!_
+
+They saw the boys across the stage, ready, too, to enter--some of them
+grinning and foolish looking; others very serious. Neale smiled at Agnes
+and waved his hand encouragingly. Her confident pose delighted him.
+
+Now they were on! It was easy, after all, to keep step with the music.
+She knew the words of the opening song perfectly. Agnes had a clear, if
+light contralto voice; the alto part was easy for her to sing.
+
+With a vim that seemed not to have been in the chorus before, the number
+came to a finish. The girls and boys fell back. Innocent Delight was in
+the centre of the stage, ready to welcome the Carnation Countess.
+
+Agnes was slow in speaking; her words seemed to drag a bit. Madam Shaw
+was waiting impatiently to come on. But the stage manager whispered
+shrilly:
+
+"Quite right, my dear! quite right! The Countess is supposed to come on
+in a sedan chair, and you must give her time."
+
+The professionals noted the girl's familiarity with the stage
+instructions; always, wherever the manager had explained in the earlier
+rehearsals the reason for some stage change, Innocent Delight had the
+matter pat. The action of the play was not retarded in any particular
+for the new girl. And her ability in handling the character of the
+blithe, joyous, light-hearted girl was most natural.
+
+Somehow, this chief amateur part going so well, pulled the others up to
+the mark. But there was still much to be wished for in the case of
+Cheerful Grigg, the twins, Sunbeam and Moonbeam, and Lily White.
+
+"I'd like to get hold of some of those other girls that Mr. Marks
+considers it his duty to punish," growled the professor. "What's all
+this foolishness about, anyway? Doesn't he want the play to be a
+success?"
+
+He said this to Miss Lederer, the principal's assistant. She shook her
+head, sadly.
+
+"I am sorry that you can't have them, Professor," she said. "But of
+course, this is only temporary for Agnes."
+
+"What's that?" he demanded angrily.
+
+"Why, she cannot play Innocent Delight for you," the teacher said
+firmly. "I am not sure that Mr. Marks will like it as it is."
+
+"He's _got_ to like it!" interrupted the professor. "I've just got to
+have the girl--there are no two ways about it. I tell you, without her
+the schools might as well give up trying to put on the play. That other
+girl, who was wished on me, is not fitted for the part at all."
+
+"But you have given it to her."
+
+"And I can take it away; you watch me!" snapped the director. "And I am
+going to have this Agnes, as you call her, Marks or no Marks!"
+
+"Is that a pun?" the teacher asked archly. "For that is why Agnes Kenway
+cannot act in the play. Bad marks."
+
+"What's her heinous crime?" demanded the professor.
+
+"Stealing," said the assistant principal, with twinkling eyes.
+
+"Stealing! What did she steal?"
+
+"Strawberries."
+
+"My goodness! I'll pay for them," rejoined the director, quickly.
+
+"I am afraid that will not satisfy Mr. Marks."
+
+"What will satisfy him, then?" demanded the professor. "For I am
+determined to have that girl play Innocent Delight for me, or else I
+will not put on the play. I would rather shoulder the expense thus far
+incurred--all of it--than to go on with a lot of numskulls such as seem
+to have been selected for many of these important rôles. For pity's sake
+let me have at least one girl who shows talent."
+
+Meanwhile Madam Shaw, the prima donna, came to Agnes after it was all
+over and put her arms tight around the young girl's shoulders.
+
+"Who are you, my dear?" she asked, looking kindly down upon Agnes'
+blushing face.
+
+"Agnes Kenway, ma'am."
+
+"Oh! one of the Corner House girls!" cried the lady. "I have heard of
+you sisters. Three of you were in the play from the first. And why not
+you, before?"
+
+"Oh!" fluttered Agnes, now waking up from the beautiful dream in which
+she had lived from two o'clock till five. "I am not in it--really. I
+cannot play the part in the opera house."
+
+"Why not, pray?" demanded Madam Shaw in some surprise.
+
+"Because I have broken some rules and am being punished," admitted
+Agnes.
+
+Madam Shaw hid a smile quickly. "Punished at home?" she asked gravely.
+
+"Oh, no! There is nobody to punish us at home."
+
+"No?"
+
+"No. We have no mother or father. There is only Ruth, and we none of us
+want to displease Ruth. It wouldn't be fair."
+
+"Who is Ruth?"
+
+"The oldest," said Agnes. "She is in the play. But she hasn't a very
+important part. I think she might have been given a better one!"
+
+"But _you_? Who is punishing you? Your teacher?"
+
+"Mr. Marks."
+
+"No? Not really?"
+
+"Yes. The basket ball team and some other girls can only look on--we
+can't act. He said so. And--and we deserve it," stammered Agnes.
+
+"Oh, indeed! But does the poor Carnation Countess deserve it?" demanded
+Madam Shaw, with asperity. "I wonder what Mr. Marks can be thinking of?"
+
+However, everybody seemed to feel happier and less discouraged about the
+play when this rehearsal was over; and Agnes went home in a seventh
+heaven of delight.
+
+"I don't care so much now if I never have a chance again," she said,
+over and over again. "I've _shown_ them that I can act."
+
+But Ruth began to be anxious. She said to Mrs. MacCall that evening:
+"Suppose, when Agnes gets older, she should determine to be a player?
+Wouldn't it be _awful_?"
+
+The old Scotch woman bit off her thread reflectively. "Tut, tut!" she
+said, at last. "That's borrowing trouble, my dear. And you're a bit
+old-fashioned, Ruthie Kenway. Perhaps being an actress isn't so awful a
+thing as we used to think. 'Tis at least a way of earning one's living;
+and it seems now that all girls must work."
+
+"Didn't they work in your day, Mrs. MacCall?" asked Ruth, slyly.
+
+"Not to be called so," was the prompt reply. "Those that had to go into
+mills and factories were looked down upon a wee bit, I am afraid. Others
+of us only learned to scrub and cook and sew and stand a man's tantrums
+for our living. It was considered more respectable to marry a bad man
+than to work for an honest wage."
+
+Saturday Agnes was not called upon at all. She heard that Trix was at
+home again; but there were no rehearsals of the speaking parts of _The
+Carnation Countess_. Only the dances and ensembles of the choruses were
+tried out in the afternoon.
+
+The girls heard nothing further regarding the re-distribution of the
+parts--if there were to be such changes made. They only understood that
+the play would be given, in spite of the director's recent despairing
+words.
+
+And it was known, too, that the following rehearsals would be given on
+the stage of the opera house itself. The scenery was ready, and on
+Saturday morning of the next week the first costume rehearsal would be
+undertaken.
+
+Dot and her little friends were quite over-wrought about their bee
+dresses. They had learned to dance and "drone" in unison; now they were
+all to be turned into fat brown bees, with yellow heads and stripes on
+their papier-maché bodies, and transparent wings.
+
+Tess, as Swiftwing, the chief hummingbird, was a brilliant sight indeed.
+Only one thing marred Tess Kenway's complete happiness. It was Miss
+Pepperill's illness.
+
+For the unfortunate teacher was very ill at her boarding house. Her head
+had been hurt when the automobile knocked her down. And while her broken
+bones might mend well, Dr. Forsyth was much troubled regarding the
+patient.
+
+The Corner House girls heard that Miss Pepperill was quite out of her
+head. She babbled about things that she never would have spoken of in
+her right mind. And while she had so vigorously refused to be taken to
+the Women's and Children's Hospital when she was hurt, she talked about
+Mrs. Eland, the matron, a good deal of the time.
+
+"I'm going to see my Mrs. Eland and tell her that Miss Pepperill asks
+for her and if she has found her sister," Tess announced, after a long
+conference with the teacher's landlady, who was a kindly, if not very
+wise maiden lady.
+
+"I see no harm in your telling Mrs. Eland," Ruth agreed. "Perhaps Mrs.
+Eland would go to see her, if it would do the poor thing any good."
+
+"Why do you say 'poor thing' about Miss Pepperill, Ruthie?" demanded
+Dot, the inquisitive. "Has she lost all her money?"
+
+"Goodness me! no, child," replied the oldest Corner House girl; nor did
+she explain why she had said "poor thing" in referring to the sick
+teacher. But everybody was saying the same; they did not expect her to
+live.
+
+The substitute teacher who took Miss Pepperill's place in school had
+possibly been warned against Sammy Pinkney; for that embryo pirate
+found, at the end of the first day of such substitution, that he was no
+better off than he had been under Miss Pepperill's régime.
+
+Tess was very serious these days. She was troubled about the teacher who
+was ill (for it was the child's nature to love whether she was loved in
+return or no), her lessons had to be kept up to the mark, and, in
+addition, there was her part as Swiftwing.
+
+She knew her steps and her songs and her speeches, perfectly. But upon
+the Saturday morning when the dances were rehearsed, Tess found that
+there was more to the part than she had at first supposed.
+
+There was to be a tableau in which--at the back of the stage--Swiftwing
+in glistening raiment, was the central figure. A light scaffolding was
+built behind a gaudy lace "drop" and to the steps of this scaffolding,
+from the wings on either side of the stage, the birds and butterflies
+flew in their brilliant costumes to group themselves back of the gauze
+of the painted drop.
+
+Tess was a bit terrified when she was first taken into the flies, for
+Swiftwing first of all was to come floating down from above to hover
+over and finally to rest upon a great carnation.
+
+Of course, Tess saw that she was to stand quite securely upon the very
+top step of the scaffolding. A strong wire was attached to her belt at
+the back so that she could not possibly fall.
+
+Below, and on either side of Tess, was a smaller girl, each costumed as
+a butterfly. These were tossed up to their stations by the strong arms
+of stage-hands. They could not be held by wires as Tess was, for their
+wings were made to vibrate slowly all through the scene.
+
+On lower steps others of the brilliantly dressed children--all
+butterflies and winged insects--were grouped. From the front the picture
+thus formed was a very beautiful one indeed; but the children had to go
+over and over the scene to learn to do their part skillfully and to
+secure the right effect from the front.
+
+"Aren't you scared up there, little girl?" one of the women playing in
+the piece asked Tess.
+
+"No-o," said the Corner House girl, slowly. "I'm not scared. But I shall
+be glad each time when the tableau is over. You see, these other little
+girls have no belt and wire to hold them, as I have."
+
+"But you are so much higher than the others!"
+
+"No, ma'am. It only looks so. It's what the stage man said was an
+optical delusion," Tess replied, meaning "illusion." "I can touch those
+other girls on either side of me--yes, ma'am."
+
+And she did touch them. Each time that she went through the scene, and
+the butterflies' wings vibrated as they bent forward, Tess' hands, which
+were out of sight of the audience, clutched at the other girls' sashes.
+
+Tess was a sturdy girl for her age. Her hands at the waists of the two
+butterflies steadied them as they posed on this day for the final
+rehearsal of the difficult tableau.
+
+"That's it!" called out the manager. "Now! Hold it! Lights!"
+
+The glare of the spotlight shot down upon the grouped children from
+above the proscenium arch.
+
+"Steady!" shouted the stage manager again, for the whole group behind
+the gauze drop seemed to be wavering.
+
+"Hold that pose!" repeated the man, commandingly.
+
+But it was not the children who moved. There was the creaking sound of
+parting timbers. Somebody from the back shouted a warning--but too late.
+
+"Down! All of you down to the stage!"
+
+Those on the lower steps of the scaffolding jumped. The stage hands ran
+in to catch the others; but the higher little girls could not leap
+without risking both life and limb!
+
+A pandemonium of warning cries and shrieks of alarm followed. The
+scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward through the drop which
+retarded it at first, but finally tearing the drop from its fastenings
+in the flies.
+
+Swiftwing, the hummingbird, did not add her little voice to the general
+uproar. She was safely held by the wire cable hooked to her belt at the
+back.
+
+But the butterflies were helpless. The men who tried to seize them from
+the rear could not do so at first because the scaffolding structure fell
+out upon the stage.
+
+The Corner House girl, frightened as she was, miraculously preserved her
+presence of mind. As she had already done before during the rehearsals,
+she seized the sashes of her two smaller schoolmates at the first alarm.
+Their feet slipped from the foothold, but Tess held them.
+
+[Illustration: The scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward
+through the drop. Page 238]
+
+Neale had taught Tess, and even Dot, how to use their strength to better
+advantage than most little girls. Tess was sure of her own safety in
+this emergency, and she allowed her body to bend forward almost double,
+as the two frightened little butterflies slipped from the falling
+scaffolding.
+
+For a dreadful moment or two, their entire weight hung from Tess
+Kenway's clutching hands. Her shoulders felt as though they were being
+dislocated; but she gritted her teeth and held on.
+
+And then two of the men caught the little, fluttering butterflies by
+their ankles.
+
+"Let 'em come!" yelled one of the men.
+
+Tess loosed her grasp as the scaffolding crashed to the stage. The last
+to be lowered, Swiftwing came down, so frightened she could not think
+for a moment where she was.
+
+"Oh, Tess, darling!" gasped Agnes.
+
+"Sister's brave little girl!" murmured Ruth.
+
+"I--I didn't spoil the tableau, did I?" Tess asked.
+
+"Spoil it? My goodness, Tess Kenway," shouted Neale O'Neil, who,
+likewise, had run to her, "you made the biggest hit of the whole show!
+If you could do that at every performance _The Carnation Countess_ would
+certain sure be a big success!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE FINAL REHEARSAL
+
+
+Before the tableau in which Tess Kenway had so covered herself with
+glory was again rehearsed, the scaffolding was rebuilt as a series of
+broad steps and made much lower.
+
+Tess was not to be frightened out of playing her part as Swiftwing, the
+hummingbird.
+
+"No. I was not in danger," she reported to Mrs. Eland, when she and Dot
+went to see the gray lady as usual the next Monday afternoon. "The wire
+held me up so that I could not possibly fall. It was only the other two
+girls who might have fallen. But they hurt my arms."
+
+"If you had been a _real_ hummingbird," put in the practical Dot, "you
+could have caught one of them with your beak and the other in your
+claws. Butterflies aren't very heavy."
+
+"Those butterflies were heavy enough," sighed her sister.
+
+"It was splendid of you, Tess!" cried Mrs. Eland. "I am proud of you."
+
+"So are we," announced Dot. "But Aunt Sarah says we ought not to praise
+her too much or maybe she'll get biggity. _What's_ 'biggity'?"
+
+"Something I'm sure Tess will never be," said the matron, hugging Tess
+again. "Why so sober, dear? You ought to be glad you helped save those
+two little girls from a serious fall."
+
+"I am," Tess replied.
+
+"Then, what is the matter?"
+
+"It's Miss Pepperill."
+
+"Oh, dear me!" murmured Dot. "She fusses over that old Miss Pepperpot as
+though she were one of the family."
+
+"Is she really worse, dear?" asked Mrs. Eland, softly, of Tess.
+
+"They think she is. And--and, Mrs. Eland! She does call for you so
+pitifully! Miss Lippit told me so."
+
+"Calls for _me_?" gasped the matron, paling.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. Miss Lippit says she doesn't know why. Miss Pepperill never
+knew you very well before she was hurt. But I told Miss Lippit that I
+could understand it well enough," went on Tess, eagerly. "You'd be just
+the person I'd want to nurse me if I were sick."
+
+"Thank you, my dear," smiled Mrs. Eland, beginning to breathe freely
+once more.
+
+"You see, Miss Lippit knows Miss Pepperill pretty well. She knew her out
+West."
+
+"Out West?" repeated Mrs. Eland.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. Miss Lippit says that isn't her real name. She was a
+'dopted child."
+
+"Who was?" demanded the matron, all in a flutter again.
+
+"Miss Pepperill. She was brought up by a family named Pepperill. Seems
+funny," said Tess, gravely. "_She_ lost her mother and father in a
+fire."
+
+"I guess that's why her hair is red," said Dot, not believing her own
+reasoning, but desiring to be in the conversation.
+
+Mrs. Eland was silent for some minutes. "She isn't mad, is she?"
+whispered Dot to Tess.
+
+But the latter respected her friend's silence. Finally the matron said
+pleasantly enough: "I am going out when you children go home. You must
+show me where this school teacher of yours lives. If I can be of any
+service----"
+
+She put on her bonnet and the long gray cloak in a few minutes, and the
+three set forth from the hospital. Dot clung to one hand and Tess to the
+other of the little gray woman, as they went to Miss Lippit's boarding
+house.
+
+"This is Mrs. Eland," Tess said to the spinster, who was both landlady
+and friend of the injured school teacher. "She is my friend and the
+matron of the hospital where Miss Pepperill went with us one day."
+
+"When she carried _my_ flowers and gave some to the children," muttered
+Dot, who had never gotten over that.
+
+"I'm glad to see you, Mrs. Eland," said Miss Lippit. "I do not know why
+Miss Pepperill calls for you so much. She is a singularly friendless
+woman."
+
+"I thought she had always lived in Milton?" said the matron, in an
+inquiring way.
+
+"Oh, no, ma'am. She lived in the town I came from. We children always
+thought she was Mr. and Mrs. Pepperill's granddaughter; but it seemed
+not. She was picked up by them wandering about in Liston after the big
+fire."
+
+Mrs. Eland repeated the name of the Western city, holding hard to a
+chairback the while, and watching Miss Lippit hungrily.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said the landlady. "We learned all about it. Miss
+Pepperill was so small she didn't know her own name--only 'Teeny.'"
+
+"'Teeny'!" repeated Mrs. Eland, pale to her lips.
+
+"She had a sister. She remembered her quite plainly. Marion. When Miss
+Pepperill was younger she was always expecting to meet that sister
+somewhere. But I haven't heard her say anything about it of late years."
+
+"Show--show me where the poor thing lies," murmured Mrs. Eland.
+
+They went into the bedroom. Miss Pepperill, her head looking very
+strange indeed with nothing but bandages upon it, sat up suddenly in
+bed.
+
+"Mrs. Eland! isn't it?" she said weakly. "Pleased to meet you. You are
+little Tess Kenway's friend. Tell me!" she cried, clasping her hands,
+"did you find your sister, Mrs. Eland?"
+
+The matron ran with streaming eyes to the bed and folded the poor,
+pain-racked body in her arms. "Yes, yes!" she sobbed. "I've found her!
+I've found her!"
+
+The two smallest Corner House girls did not see this meeting; but they
+brought home the report from Miss Lippit that Mrs. Eland was going to
+make arrangements to stay all night with Miss Pepperill, and perhaps
+longer. Her work at the hospital would have to be neglected for a time.
+
+These busy days, however, the young folk were neglecting nothing which
+was connected with the forthcoming benefit for the Women's and
+Children's Hospital. _The Carnation Countess_ was _not_ to be a failure.
+
+The changes made in the assignment of the speaking parts caused some
+little heartburnings; but the director was determined in the matter.
+First of all he brought Mr. Marks to his way of thinking.
+
+"I won't give the play if I can't have my own Innocent Delight, Cheerful
+Grigg, and some of the others," said the director, firmly.
+
+There was good reason for taking the rôle away from Trix Severn--she had
+neglected rehearsals. Nevertheless, she was very much excited when she
+learned that the part had been given to Agnes Kenway, who was making
+such a success of it.
+
+Miss Severn, in tears, went to the principal of the Milton High School
+and laid her trouble before him. Mr. Marks listened grimly and then
+showed her the letter purporting to come from the proprietor of
+Strawberry Farm, in which the girls who had raided the farmer's patch
+were named--excluding herself.
+
+Beside this letter he put a specimen of Trix's own handwriting. It
+chanced to be the note which had suggested Trix for the part of Innocent
+Delight in the play.
+
+"It strikes me, Miss Severn," said the principal, sourly, "that you are
+getting to be a ready letter writer. Don't deny the authorship of these
+scripts. Your teachers are all agreed that you wrote them both.
+
+"This one to the professor is reprehensible enough. I am sorry that a
+girl of the Milton High School should write such a note. But this
+other," and his voice grew very stern, "is criminal--yes, criminal!
+
+"I have learned from Mr. Buckham personally, that your father's
+automobile was stalled one day in front of his house and that you went
+in and met his wife, who is an invalid.
+
+"You must have had it in your mind then to make trouble for your
+schoolmates, and learning that Mr. Buckham did not write himself, you
+stole a sheet of his letter paper, and wrote this contemptible screed.
+
+"I shall tell your parents of your action. I do not feel that it is
+within my province to punish you for such a contemptible thing. However,
+knowing that you have been a traitor to your mates, I withdraw my order
+for their punishment on the spot. I never have, and never will, accept
+the evidence of a traitor in a matter of this character.
+
+"As Mr. Buckham himself holds no hard feelings about the foolish prank
+of last May, I shall say no more about it. But the contempt in which
+your schoolmates must hold you, if they learn that you wrote this
+letter, should be its own punishment."
+
+Agnes and the others, however, paid little attention to Trix Severn.
+Agnes knew, and the others suspected, that Trix was the one who had
+told; but the Corner House girl felt that she had deserved the
+punishment she received, and was deeply grateful to Mr. Marks for
+withdrawing the order against her playing in _The Carnation Countess_.
+
+Eva got the part of Cheerful Grigg; some of the other members of the
+basket ball team obtained good parts, too. They studied hard and were
+able to act creditably at the final and dress rehearsal.
+
+The play was to be given on three nights and one afternoon of Christmas
+week. School was closed for the holidays, and little was talked of or
+thought about among the Corner House girls and their mates, but the
+play.
+
+"I hope I won't spoil the play," said Tess, with a worried air. "And I
+hope we will make--oh! lots and lots of money for the hospital, so that
+Mrs. Eland can stay there. For now, you know, with her sister sick,
+she'll need her salary more than ever."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+A GREAT SUCCESS
+
+
+Miss Pepperill was not going to die. Dr. Forsyth made that good prophecy
+soon after Mrs. Eland had taken on herself the nursing of her strangely
+met sister.
+
+The school teacher--so grim and secretive by nature--had been in a fever
+of worry and uncertainty long before the accident that had stretched her
+on this bed of illness. The relief her mind secured when her sister,
+Marion, and she were reunited did much to aid her recovery.
+
+Nobody would have suspected that the calm, demure, little gray woman and
+the assertive, sharp-tongued school teacher were sisters; but the
+evidence of their own childish remembrances was conclusive. And that
+little Mrs. Eland should be the older of the two was likewise
+astounding.
+
+There was still a sad secret on Mrs. Eland's heart. Mr. and Mrs. Buckham
+knew it. The smallest Corner House girl had prodded the doubt of her
+father's honesty to the surface of the hospital matron's mind.
+
+"There ain't no fool like an old fool, it's my bounden duty to say," Mr.
+Bob Buckham remarked on the Monday of Christmas week, as he warmed his
+hands before the open fire on the hearth of the old Corner House sitting
+room.
+
+He had come to town ostensibly to bring the Corner House girls'
+Christmas goose--a noble bird which Ruth had picked out of his flock
+herself on a recent visit to Strawberry Farm. But he confessed to
+another errand in Milton.
+
+"I'd no business to talk out like I done about Abe and Lem Aden that
+first day you children was at our house. But I've allus hugged that
+injury to my breast. Marm says I ain't no business to, and I know she's
+right. But it hurt me dreadfully when I was a boy to lose my marm.
+
+"The rascality lay between old Lem and Abe. Course we couldn't never
+prove anything on Lem, and he never had a good word himself for his
+brother. I read his letters to Abe--Mrs. Eland, she showed 'em to
+me--and there wasn't a word in 'em about my father's five hundred."
+
+"Oh, dear me!" Ruth replied, "I wish it could be cleared up for the sake
+of Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill. You don't care about the money now,
+Mr. Buckham."
+
+"No. Thank the good Lord, I don't. And as I say, I blame myself for ever
+mentioning it before you gals."
+
+"'Little pitchers have big ears,'" quoted Agnes.
+
+At that Dot flared up. "I'm not a little pitcher! And I haven't got big
+ears!" The smallest Corner House girl knew now that her ill-timed
+remarks during her first call with Tess on Mrs. Eland had, somehow,
+made trouble. "How'd I know that Lem--Lemon Aden's brother was Mrs.
+Eland's father? He might have been her uncle."
+
+They had to laugh at Dot's vehement defense; but Mr. Bob Buckham went
+on: "My fault, I tell ye--my fault. But I believe it's going to be all
+cleared up."
+
+"How?" asked Agnes, quickly.
+
+"And will my Mrs. Eland feel better in her mind?" Tess asked gravely.
+
+"That's what she will," declared the farmer, vigorously. "She told me
+about the old papers and the book left by her Uncle Lemuel over there to
+the Quoharis poorfarm where he died. I got a letter from her to the
+townfarm keeper, and I drove over and got 'em the other day.
+
+"Like ter not got 'em at all--old Lem being dead nigh fifteen years now.
+Wal! Marm and me's been looking over that little book. Lem mebbe was a
+leetle crazy--'specially 'bout money matters, and toward the end of his
+life. You'd think, to read what he'd writ down, that he died possessed
+of a lot of property instead of being town's poor. That was his
+foolishness.
+
+"But 'way back, when he was a much younger man, and his brother Abe got
+scart over a trick he'd played about a horse trade and went West (the
+man who was tricked threatened to do him bodily harm), what old Lem
+wrote in that old diary was easy enough understood.
+
+"There's some letters from Abe, too. Put two and two together,"
+concluded Mr. Buckham, "and it's easy to see where my pap's five hundred
+dollars went to. It was left by Abe all right in Lem's hands; but it
+stuck to them hands!"
+
+"Oh!" cried Agnes, "what a wicked man that Lemuel Aden must have been."
+
+"Nateral born miser. Hated ter give up a penny he didn't hafter give up.
+But them two women--wonderful how they come together after all these
+years--them two women needn't worry their souls no longer about that
+five hundred dollars. I never heard as folks could be held accountable
+for their uncle's sins."
+
+That was the way the old farmer made Mrs. Eland see it, too. After all,
+she could only be grateful to the two smallest Corner House girls for
+bringing her and her sister together.
+
+"If I had not taught Tess the old rhyme:
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+      Then William, the son,'"
+
+the matron of the Women's and Children's Hospital declared, "and Tess
+had not recited it in school, Teeny, you would never have remembered it
+and felt the strange drawing toward me that you did feel."
+
+"And if you hadn't met that child, I have an idea that you'd have lost
+your position at this hospital--and then where'd we be?" said the
+convalescent Miss Pepperill, sitting propped up in her chair in the
+matron's room at the institution in question. "That child, Tess,
+certainly started all the interest now being shown in this hospital."
+
+That Monday night was the first public presentation of the play for the
+benefit of the hospital. Few were more anxious or more excited before
+the curtain went up, for the success of _The Carnation Countess_, than
+the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil; but there was in store for them
+in the immediate future much more excitement than this of performing in
+the play, all of which will be narrated in the next volume of the
+series, to be entitled, "The Corner House Girls' Odd Find: Where They
+Made It; and What the Strange Discovery Led To."
+
+Ruth Kenway felt a share of responsibility for the success of the play,
+as she naturally would for any matter in which she had even the smallest
+part. It was Ruth's way to be "cumbered by many cares." Mr. Howbridge
+sometimes jokingly called her "Martha."
+
+Dot was only desirous of singing her "bee" song with the other children,
+and then hurrying home where she might continue her work on a wonderful
+Christmas outfit for her Alice-doll. Alice was to have a "coming out
+party" during the holiday week, and positively _had_ to have some new
+clothes. Besides, _The Carnation Countess_ had become rather a stale
+affair for the smallest Corner House girl by this time.
+
+Tess seriously hoped she would do nothing in her part of Swiftwing, the
+hummingbird, to detract from the performance. Tess did not take herself
+at all seriously as an actor; she only desired--as she always did--to do
+what she had to do, right.
+
+As for Agnes, she was truly filled with delight. The fly-away's very
+heart and soul was in the character she played. She lived the part of
+Innocent Delight.
+
+She truly did well in this first performance. No stage fright did she
+experience. From her first word spoken in the centre of the stage while
+Madam Shaw was being borne in by the Sedan men, till the last word she
+spoke in the final act of the play, Agnes Kenway acted her part with
+credit.
+
+In truth, as a whole, the Milton school pupils did well in the play. The
+professor's fears were not fulfilled. Milton people did not by any
+means, laugh the actors out of town.
+
+Instead, the packed house of the first night was repeated on the second
+evening. The matinée on the third day, which was given at popular
+prices, was overcrowded--they had to stop selling admission tickets.
+While the third and last evening saw a repetition of the crowds at the
+other performances.
+
+The local papers gave much space each day to the benefit, and their
+criticisms of the amateur players made the hearts of boys and girls
+alike, glad.
+
+The reports from the ticket office were, after all, the main thing. It
+was soon seen that a goodly sum would be made for the Women's and
+Children's Hospital. In the end it amounted to more than three thousand
+dollars.
+
+"Why, _that_ will give the hospital a new lease of life! Dr. Forsyth
+said so," Agnes declared at the dinner table the day after the last
+performance.
+
+"It will pay Mrs. Eland's salary for a long time," Tess remarked, with a
+sigh of satisfaction.
+
+"I don't know but that sounds rather selfish, after all, dear," Ruth
+said, smiling at sober little Tess.
+
+"What does, Sister?"
+
+"It seems that all _you_ care about the hospital is that Mrs. Eland
+shall get her wages."
+
+"Yes. I s'pose that's my special interest in it," admitted Tess, slowly.
+"But then, if my Mrs. Eland is there as matron, the hospital is bound to
+do a great deal of good."
+
+"Oh! wisdom of the ancients!" laughed Agnes.
+
+"Quite true, my dear," commented Mrs. MacCall. "Your Mrs. Eland is a
+fine woman. I've always said that."
+
+"Everybody doesn't agree with you," said Ruth, smiling.
+
+"Who doesn't like Mrs. Eland?" demanded Tess, quite excited.
+
+"Our neighbor, Sammy Pinkney," Ruth replied, laughing again. "I heard
+him talking about her this very morning, and what he said was not
+complimentary."
+
+Tess was quite flushed. "Sammy gave us Billy Bumps," she said sternly,
+"and Billy is a very good goat."
+
+"Except when he eats up poor Seneca Sprague's hair," chuckled Agnes.
+
+"He is a _very_ good goat," repeated Tess. "But if Sammy says my Mrs.
+Eland isn't the very nicest lady there is--well--he can take his old
+goat back--so now!"
+
+"What did he say, Ruthie?" asked Agnes.
+
+"I heard him say that if Mrs. Eland nursed Miss Pepperill so well that
+she could come back to teach school, when he got to be a pirate he would
+sail 'way off with Mrs. Eland somewhere and make her walk the plank!"
+
+"If he does such a thing," cried Dot, excitedly, "he _can_ take back his
+old goat! You know, I don't believe Mrs. Eland could walk a plank,
+anyway. She isn't an acrobat, like Neale."
+
+"If Sammy Pinkney tries to be a pirate, and carries my Mrs. Eland off in
+any such horrid way," declared Tess with much energy for her, "I hope
+his mother spanks him good!"
+
+And with the hilarious laughter that welcomed this speech from
+Swiftwing, the hummingbird, let us bid farewell to our four Corner House
+girls.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+CHARMING STORIES FOR GIRLS
+
+From eight to twelve years old
+
+THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS SERIES
+
+BY GRACE BROOKS HILL.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Four girls from eight to fourteen years of age receive word that a rich
+bachelor uncle has died, leaving them the old Corner House he occupied.
+They move into it and then the fun begins. What they find and do will
+provoke many a hearty laugh. Later, they enter school and make many
+friends. One of these invites the girls to spend a few weeks at a
+bungalow owned by her parents and the adventures they meet with make
+very interesting reading. Clean, wholesome stories of humor and
+adventure, sure to appeal to all young girls.
+
+    1 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS.
+    2 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL.
+    3 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS UNDER CANVAS.
+    4 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY.
+    5 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS' ODD FIND.
+    6 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS ON A TOUR.
+    7 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS GROWING UP.
+
+(Other volumes in preparation)
+
+_Cloth, Large 12mo., Illustrated, Per vol. 75 cents_
+
+For sale at all bookstores or sent (postage paid) on receipt of price by
+the publishers.
+
+    BARSE & HOPKINS
+    Publishers      28 West 23rd Street       New York
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Page  10 Hyphen removed from "bespectacled" in
+             rather sharp-featured, bespectacled lady
+
+    Page  40 "Bump's" changed to "Bumps'" in
+             attract Billy Bumps' palate
+
+    Page  44 "Eve" changed to "Eva" in
+             Eva Larry doesn't always get things
+
+    Page 116 Double closing quotation mark removed from
+             To steal a' 'tater!'
+
+    Page 129 The word "barries" retained in
+             barries at that last end of the patch
+
+    Page 148 Removed "in" from
+             Also the training of those who
+
+    Page 193 The word "bady" changed to "badly" in
+             the word so badly as that will never get
+
+    Page 236 The word "strongs" changed to "strong" in
+             tossed up to their stations by the strong arms of
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Corner House Girls in a Play, by 
+Grace Brooks Hill and R. Emmett Owen
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY ***
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Corner House Girls in a Play, by 
+Grace Brooks Hill and R. Emmett Owen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: The Corner House Girls in a Play
+       How they rehearsed, how they acted, and what the play brought in
+
+Author: Grace Brooks Hill
+        R. Emmett Owen
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2010 [EBook #31722]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1><em>The</em> CORNER<br />
+HOUSE GIRLS<br />
+IN A PLAY</h1>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="illuslink"><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 436px;">
+<img src="images/frontis.jpg" width="436" height="600" alt="Frontispiece" title="" />
+<span class="caption">She truly did well in this performance.<br />
+
+(<a href="#frontis2">Page 252</a>) <em>Frontispiece</em></span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div id="title">
+<p class="head">THE<br />
+CORNER HOUSE GIRLS<br />
+IN A PLAY</p>
+
+<p class="sub1">HOW THEY REHEARSED</p>
+<p class="sub2">HOW THEY ACTED</p>
+<p class="sub3">AND WHAT THE PLAY BROUGHT IN</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="by">BY</span>
+<br />
+<span class="author">GRACE BROOKS HILL</span><br />
+<span class="book smcap">Author of "The Corner House Girls," "The Corner
+House Girls at School," etc.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="illus1"><em>ILLUSTRATED BY</em></span><br />
+<span class="illus2"><em>R. EMMETT OWEN</em></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="pub1">NEW YORK</span><br />
+<span class="pub2">BARSE &amp; HOPKINS</span><br />
+<span class="pub1">PUBLISHERS</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div id="box">
+
+<p class="adhead">BOOKS FOR GIRLS</p>
+
+<hr class="hrad" />
+
+<p class="adtitle">The Corner House Girls Series<br />
+
+<span class="adby">By Grace Brooks Hill</span><br />
+
+<span class="adprice"><em>12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume,
+75 cents, postpaid.</em></span></p>
+
+<div class="adblock">
+<p class="adbooks">THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS<br />
+THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL<br />
+THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS UNDER CANVAS<br />
+THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY<br />
+THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS' ODD FIND<br />
+THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS ON A TOUR<br /></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="adprice">(<em>Other volumes in preparation</em>)</p>
+
+<p class="adpub">BARSE &amp; HOPKINS<br />
+<span class="adpub2 smcap">Publishers</span><span class="adpub3 smcap">New York</span><br /></p>
+</div>
+
+<h5>Copyright, 1916,<br />
+by<br />
+Barse &amp; Hopkins</h5>
+<hr class="hrad2" />
+<h5><em>The Corner House Girls in a Play</em></h5>
+
+
+<h6>VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY<br />
+BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK</h6>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a name="contents" id="contents"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">CHAPTER</td>
+<td class="tdr2" colspan="2">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">I</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Sovereigns of England</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#i">9</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">II</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Lady in the Gray Cloak</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#ii">18</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">III</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Billy Bumps' Banquet</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#iii">27</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IV</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Basket Ball Team in Trouble</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#iv">42</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">V</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Stone in the Pool</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#v">57</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VI</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Just Out of Reach</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#vi">66</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VII</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Core of the Apple</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#vii">75</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VIII</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Lycurgus Billet's Eagle Bait</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#viii">84</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IX</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Bob Buckham Takes a Hand</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#ix">101</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">X</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Something About Old Times</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#x">112</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XI</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Strawberry Mark</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xi">122</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XII</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Tea With Mrs. Eland</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xii">134</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XIII</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Neale Suffers a Shortening Process</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xiii">145</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XIV</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The First Rehearsal</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xiv">156</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XV</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Hallowe'en Party</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xv">167</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XVI</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Five-dollar Gold Piece</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xvi">175</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XVII</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Mysterious Letter</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xvii">184</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XVIII</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Miss Pepperill and the Gray Lady</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xviii">193</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XIX</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Thanksgiving Skating Party</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xix">198</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XX</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Neale's Endless Chain</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xx">206</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XXI</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Corner House Thanksgiving</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxi">212</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XXII</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Clouds and Sunshine</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxii">217</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XXIII</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Swiftwing, the Hummingbird</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxiii">228</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XXIV</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Final Rehearsal</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxiv">240</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XXV</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Great Success</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xxv">247</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Illustrations">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr2" colspan="2">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">She truly did well in this performance</td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#frontis"><em>Frontispiece</em></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">At the moment the eagle dropped with spread talons,
+the big dog leaped</td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#eagle2">103</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">They saw two huge pumpkin lanterns grinning a
+welcome from the gateposts</td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#pumpkin2">173</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward
+through the drop</td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#scaffold2">238</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span>
+THE CORNER HOUSE<br />
+GIRLS IN A PLAY</h1>
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+<h2><a name="i" id="i"></a>CHAPTER I<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">I never</span> can learn them in the wide, wide world! I just know I never
+can, Dot!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," responded Dorothy
+Kenway&mdash;only nobody ever called her by her full name, for she really was
+too small to achieve the dignity of anything longer than "Dot."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," she repeated, hugging the
+Alice-doll a little closer and wrapping the lace "throw" carefully about
+the shoulders of her favorite child. The Alice-doll had never enjoyed
+robust health since her awful experience of more than a year before,
+when she had been buried alive.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Dot had not got as far in school as the sovereigns of
+England. She had not as yet heard very much about the history of her own
+country. She knew, of course, that Columbus discovered it, the Pilgrims
+settled it, that George<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span> Washington was the father of it, and Abraham
+Lincoln saved it.</p>
+
+<p>Tess Kenway was usually very quick in her books, and she was now
+prepared to enter a class in the lower grammar grade of the Milton
+school in which she would have easy lessons in English history. She had
+just purchased the history on High Street, for school would open for the
+autumn term in a few days.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Englehart, one of the School Board and an influential citizen of
+Milton, had a penchant for beginning at the beginning of things. As he
+put it: "How can our children be grounded well in the history of our own
+country if they are not informed upon the salient points of English
+history&mdash;the Mother Country, from whom we obtained our first laws, and
+from whom came our early leaders?"</p>
+
+<p>As the two youngest Kenway girls came out of the stationery and book
+store, Miss Pepperill was entering. Tess and Dot had met Miss Pepperill
+at church the Sunday previous, and Tess knew that the rather
+sharp-featured, <a name="bespectacled" id="bespectacled"></a><ins title="hyphen removed">bespectacled</ins> lady was to be her new
+teacher.</p>
+
+<p>The girls whom Tess knew, who had already had experience with Miss
+Pepperill called her "Pepperpot." She was supposed to be very irritable,
+and she <em>did</em> have red hair. She shot questions out at one in a most
+disconcerting way, and Dot was quite amazed and startled by the way Miss
+Pepperill pounced on Tess.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span>
+"Let's see your book, child," Miss Pepperill said, seizing Tess' recent
+purchase. "Ah&mdash;yes. So you are to be in my room, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am," admitted Tess, timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;yes! What is the succession of the sovereigns of England? Name
+them!"</p>
+
+<p>Now, if Miss Pepperill had demanded that Tess Kenway name the Pleiades,
+the latter would have been no more startled&mdash;or no less able to reply
+intelligently.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;yes!" snapped Miss Pepperill, seeing Tess' vacuous expression. "I
+shall ask you that the first day you are in my room. Be prepared to
+answer it. The succession of the sovereigns of England," and she swept
+on into the store, leaving the children on the sidewalk, wonderfully
+impressed.</p>
+
+<p>They had walked over into the Parade Ground, and seated themselves on
+one of the park benches in sight of the old Corner House, as Milton
+people had called the Stower homestead, on the corner of Willow Street,
+from time immemorial. Tess' hopeless announcement followed their sitting
+on the bench for at least half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I can't never!" she sighed, making it positive by at least two
+negatives. "I never had an idea England had such an awful long string of
+kings. It's worse than the list of Presidents of the United States."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?" Dot observed, curiously. "It must be awful annoyable to have to
+learn 'em."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span>
+"Goodness, Dot! There you go again with one of your big words,"
+exclaimed Tess, in vexation. "Who ever heard of 'annoyable' before? You
+must have invented that."</p>
+
+<p>Dot calmly ignored the criticism. It must be confessed that she loved
+the sound of long words, and sometimes, as Agnes said, "made an awful
+mess of polysyllables." Agnes was the Kenway next older than Tess, while
+Ruth was seventeen, the oldest of all, and had for more than three years
+been the house-mother of the Kenway family.</p>
+
+<p>Ruth and Agnes were at home in the old Corner House at this very hour.
+There lived in the big dwelling, with the four Corner House Girls, Aunt
+Sarah Maltby (who really was no relative of the girls, but a partial
+charge upon their charity), Mrs. MacCall, their housekeeper, and old
+Uncle Rufus, Uncle Peter Stower's black butler and general factotum, who
+had been left to the care of the old man's heirs when he died.</p>
+
+<p>The first volume of this series, called "The Corner House Girls," told
+the story of the coming of the four sisters and Aunt Sarah Maltby to the
+Stower homestead, and of their first adventures in Milton&mdash;getting
+settled in their new home and making friends among their neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>In "The Corner House Girls at School," the second volume, the four
+Kenway sisters extended the field of their acquaintance in Milton and
+thereabout, entered the local schools in the several<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span> grades to which
+they were assigned, made more friends and found some few rivals. They
+began to feel, too, that responsibility which comes with improved
+fortunes, for Uncle Peter Stower had left a considerable estate to the
+four girls, of which Mr. Howbridge, the lawyer, was administrator as
+well as the girls' guardian.</p>
+
+<p>Now the second summer of their sojourn at the old Corner House was just
+ending, and the girls had but recently returned from a most delightful
+outing at Pleasant Cove, on the Atlantic Coast, some distance away from
+Milton, which was an inland town.</p>
+
+<p>All the fun and adventure of that vacation are related in "The Corner
+House Girls Under Canvas," the third volume of the series, and the one
+immediately preceding the present story.</p>
+
+<p>Tess was seldom vindictive; but after she had puzzled her poor brain for
+this half hour, trying to pick out and to get straight the Williams and
+Stephens and Henrys and Johns and Edwards and Richards, to say nothing
+of the Georges, who had reigned over England, she was quite flushed and
+excited.</p>
+
+<p>"I know I'm just going to de-<em>test</em> that Miss Pepperpot!" she exclaimed.
+"I&mdash;I could throw this old history at her&mdash;I just could!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you couldn't hit her, Tess," Dot observed placidly. "You know you
+couldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you can't throw anything straight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span>&mdash;no straighter than Sammy
+Pinkney's ma. I heard her scolding Sammy the other day for throwing
+stones. She says, 'Sammy, don't you let me catch you throwing any more
+stones.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And did he mind her?" asked Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Dot replied reflectively. "But he says to her: 'What'll
+I do if the other fellers throw 'em at me?' 'Just you come and tell me,
+Sammy, if they do,' says Mrs. Pinkney."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" queried Tess, as her sister seemed inclined to stop.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't see what good that would do, myself," confessed Dot. "Telling
+Mrs. Pinkney, I mean. And Sammy says to her: 'What's the use of telling
+you, Ma? You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!' <em>I</em> don't think
+<em>you</em> could fling that hist'ry straight at Miss Pepperpot, Tess."</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" said Tess, not altogether pleased. "I <em>feel</em> I could hit her,
+anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe Aggie could learn you the names of those sov-runs&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"'Sovereigns'!" exclaimed Tess. "For pity's sake, get the word right,
+child!"</p>
+
+<p>Dot pouted and Tess, being in a somewhat nagging mood&mdash;which was
+entirely strange for her&mdash;continued:</p>
+
+<p>"And don't say 'learn' for 'teach.' How many times has Ruthie told you
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care," retorted Dorothy Kenway. "I don't think so much of the
+English language&mdash;or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span> the English sov-er-reigns&mdash;so now! If folks can
+talk, and make themselves understood, isn't that enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't seem so," sighed Tess, despondent again as she glanced at
+the open history.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I tell you what!" cried Dot, suddenly eager. "You ask Neale O'Neil.
+I'm sure <em>he</em> can help you. He teached me how to play jack-stones."</p>
+
+<p>Tess ignored this flagrant lapse from school English, and said, rather
+haughtily:</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't ask a boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my! <em>I</em> would," Dot replied, her eyes big and round. "I'd ask
+anybody if I wanted to know anything very bad. And Neale O'Neil's quite
+the nicest boy that ever was. Aggie says so."</p>
+
+<p>"Ruth and I don't approve of boys," Tess said loftily. "And I don't
+believe Neale knows the sovereigns of England. Oh! look at those men,
+Dot!"</p>
+
+<p>Dot squirmed about on the bench to look out on Parade Street. An
+erecting gang of the telegraph company was putting up a pole. The deep
+hole had been dug for it beside the old pole, and the men, with spikes
+in their hands, were beginning to raise the new pole from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Two men at either side had hold of ropes to steady the big pine stick.
+Up it went, higher and higher, while the overseer stood at the butt to
+guide it into the hole dug in the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>
+Just as the pole was about half raised into its place, and a lineman had
+gone quickly up a neighboring pole to fasten a guy-wire to hold it, the
+interested children on the park bench saw a woman crossing the street
+near the scene of the telegraph company men's activities.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Tess!" Dot exclaimed. "What a funny dress she wears!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the older Kenway girl, eying the woman quite as curiously as
+her sister.</p>
+
+<p>The strange woman wore a long, gray cloak, and a little gray, close
+bonnet, with a stiff, white frill framing her face. That face was very
+sweet, but rather sad of expression. The children could not see her hair
+and had no means of guessing her age, for her cheeks were healthily pink
+and her gray eyes bright.</p>
+
+<p>These facts Tess and Dot observed and digested in their small minds
+before the woman reached the curb.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't she pretty?" whispered Tess.</p>
+
+<p>Before Dot could reply there sounded a wild cry from the man on the
+pole. The guy-wire had slipped.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ware below!" he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>The woman did not notice. Perhaps the close cap she wore kept her from
+hearing distinctly. The writhing wire flew through the air like a great
+snake.</p>
+
+<p>Tess dropped her history and sprang up; but Dot did not loose her hold
+upon the rather battered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span> "Alice-doll" which was her dearest possession.
+She clung, indeed, to the doll all the closer, but she screamed to the
+woman quite as loudly as Tess did, and her little blue-stockinged legs
+twinkled across the grass to the point of danger, quite as rapidly as
+did Tess' brown ones.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, lady! lady!" shrieked Tess. "You'll be killed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Please come away from there&mdash;<em>please</em>!" cried Dot.</p>
+
+<p>Their voices pierced to the strange lady's ears. Just as the pole began
+to waver and sink sidewise, despite the efforts of the men with the
+spikes, she looked up, saw the gesticulating children, observed the
+shadow of the pole and the writhing wire, and sprang upon the walk, and
+across it in time to escape the peril.</p>
+
+<p>The wire's weight brought the pole down with a crash, in spite of all
+the men could do. But the woman in the gray cloak was safe with Tess and
+Dot on the greensward.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span>
+<a name="ii" id="ii"></a>CHAPTER II<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE LADY IN THE GRAY CLOAK</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">My</span> dear girls!" the woman in the gray cloak said, with a hand on a
+shoulder of each of the younger Corner House girls, "how providential it
+was that you saw my danger. I am very much obliged to you. And how brave
+you both were!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, ma'am," said Tess, who seldom forgot her manners.</p>
+
+<p>But Dot was greatly excited. "Oh, my!" she gasped, clinging tightly to
+the Alice-doll, and quite breathless. "My&mdash;my pulse <em>did</em> jump so!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did it? You funny little thing," said the woman, half laughing and half
+crying. "What do you know about a pulse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know it's a muscle that bumps up and down, and the doctor feels
+it to see if you're better next time he comes," blurted out Dot, nothing
+loath to show what knowledge she thought she possessed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear!" cried the lady, laughing heartily now. And, dropping down
+upon the very bench where Tess and Dot had been sitting, she drew the
+two children to seats beside her. "Oh, my dear! I shall have to tell
+that to Dr. Forsyth."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>
+"Oh!" ejaculated Tess, who was looking at the pink-cheeked lady with
+admiring eyes. "Oh! <em>we</em> know Dr. Forsyth. He is our doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he, indeed? And who are you?" responded the lady, the sad look on
+her face quite disappearing now that she talked so animatedly with the
+little Kenways.</p>
+
+<p>"We are Dot and Tess Kenway," said Tess. "I'm Tess. We live just over
+there," and she pointed to the big, old-fashioned mansion across the
+Parade Ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, then," said the woman in the gray cloak, "you are the Corner House
+girls. I have heard of you."</p>
+
+<p>"We are only two of them," said Dot, quickly. "There's four."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! then you are only half the quartette."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe we are <em>half</em>&mdash;do you, Tess?" said Dot, seriously. "You
+see," she added to the lady, "Ruthie and Aggie are so much bigger than
+we are."</p>
+
+<p>The lady in the gray cloak laughed again. "You are all four of equal
+importance, I have no doubt. And you must be very happy together&mdash;you
+sisters." The sad look returned to her face. "It must be lovely to have
+three sisters."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you ever have any at all?" asked Dot, sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>"I had a sister once&mdash;one very dear sister," said the lady,
+thoughtfully, and looking away across the Parade Ground.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span>
+Tess and Dot gazed at each other questioningly; then Tess ventured to
+ask:</p>
+
+<p>"Did she die?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," was the sad reply. "We were separated when we were very
+young. I can just remember my sister, for we were both little girls in
+pinafores. I loved my sister very much, and I am sure she loved me, and,
+if she is alive, misses me quite as much as I do her."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how sad that is!" murmured Tess. "I hope you will find her, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to be thought of in this big world&mdash;not to be thought of now,"
+repeated the lady, more briskly. She picked up the history that Tess had
+dropped. "And which of you little tots studies this? Isn't English
+history rather far advanced for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tess is <em>nawful</em> smart," Dot hastened to say. "Miss Andrews says so,
+though she's a nawful strict teacher, too. Isn't she, Tess?"</p>
+
+<p>Her sister nodded soberly. Her mind reverted at once to the sovereigns
+of England and Miss Pepperill. "I&mdash;I'm afraid I'm not very quick to
+learn, after all. Miss Pepperill will think me an awful dunce when I
+can't learn the sovereigns."</p>
+
+<p>"The sovereigns?" repeated the woman in gray, with interest. "What
+sovereigns?"</p>
+
+<p>So Tess (of course, with Dot's valuable help) explained her difficulty,
+and all about the new teacher Tess expected to have.</p>
+
+<p>"And she'll think I'm awfully dull," repeated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span> Tess, sadly. "I just
+<em>can't</em> make my mind remember the succession of those kings and queens.
+It's the hardest thing I ever tried to learn. Do you s'pose all English
+children have to learn it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know they have an easy way of committing to memory the succession of
+their sovereigns, from William the Conqueror, down to the present time,"
+said the lady, thoughtfully. "Or, they used to have."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear me!" wailed Tess. "I wish I knew how to remember the old
+things. But I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose I teach you the rhyme I learned when I was a very little girl
+at school?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, would you?" cried Tess, her pretty face lighting up as she gazed
+admiringly again at the woman in the gray cloak.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And we will add a couplet or two at the end to bring the list down
+to date&mdash;for there have been two more sovereigns since the good Queen
+Victoria passed away. Now attend! Here is the rhyme. I will recite it
+for you, and then I will write it down and you may learn it at your
+leisure."</p>
+
+<p>Both Tess and Dot&mdash;and of course the Alice-doll&mdash;were very attentive as
+the lady recited:</p>
+
+<div class="poemblock">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="io">"'First William, the Norman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then William, his son;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Henry, Stephen, and Henry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then Richard and John;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Next Henry the Third;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Edwards one, two, and three,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And again after Richard<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Three Henrys we see;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Two Edwards, third Richard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If rightly I guess,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Two Henrys, sixth Edward,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Queen Mary, Queen Bess,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then Jamie, the Scotchman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then Charles, whom they slew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet received after Cromwell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Another Charles, too;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Next James the Second<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ascended the throne;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then good William and Mary<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Together came on;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till Anne, Georges four,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And fourth William, all past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God sent Queen Victoria,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who long was the last;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then Edward, the Seventh<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But shortly did reign,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With George, the Fifth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">England's present sovereign.'<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">There you have it&mdash;with an original four lines at the end to complete
+the list," laughed the lady.</p>
+
+<p>Dot's eyes were big; she had lost the sense of the rhyme long before;
+but Tess was very earnest. "I&mdash;I believe I <em>could</em> learn 'em that way,"
+she confessed. "I can remember poetry quite well. Can't I, Dot?"</p>
+
+<p>"You recite 'Little Drops of Water, Little Grains of Sand' beautifully,"
+said the smallest Corner House girl, loyally.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you can learn it," said the lady, confidently.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span> "Now,
+Tess&mdash;is that your name&mdash;Theresa?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am&mdash;only almost nobody ever calls me by it <em>all</em>. Miss Andrews
+used to when she was very, very angry. But I hope my new teacher, Miss
+Pepperill, won't be angry with me at all&mdash;if I can only learn these
+sovereigns."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall," declared the lady in gray. "I have a pencil here in my bag.
+And here is a piece of paper. I will write it all out for you and you
+can study it from now until the day school opens. Then, when this Miss
+Pepperill demands it, you will have it pat&mdash;right on the end of your
+tongue."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so," said Tess, with dawning cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<div class="poemblock">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="io">"'First William, the Norman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then William, his son;'<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">I believe I <em>can</em> learn to recite it all if you are kind enough to write
+it down."</p>
+
+<p>The lady did so, writing the lines in a beautiful, round hand, and so
+plain that even Dot, who was a trifle "weak" in reading anything but
+print, could quite easily spell out the words.</p>
+
+<p>"Weren't there any more names for kings when those lived?" the youngest
+Kenway asked seriously.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what makes you ask that?" asked the smiling lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe there weren't enough to go 'round," continued the puzzled Dot.
+"There are so many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span> of 'em of one name&mdash;&mdash;Williams, and Georges, and
+Edwardses. Don't English people have any more names to give to their
+sov-runs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sov-er-eigns," whispered Tess, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I mean," said the placid Dot. "The lady knows what I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I do, dear," agreed the woman in the gray cloak. "But I
+expect the mothers of kings, like the mothers of other little boys, like
+to name their sons after their fathers.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, children, I must go," she added briskly, getting up off the bench
+and handing Tess the written paper. "Good-bye. I hope I shall meet you
+both again very soon. Let me kiss you, Tess&mdash;and you, Dorothy Kenway. It
+has done me good to know you."</p>
+
+<p>She kissed both children quickly, and then set off along the Parade
+Ground walk. Tess and Dot bade her good-bye shrilly, turning themselves
+toward the old Corner House.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter now?" asked Dot.</p>
+
+<p>"We never asked the lady her name&mdash;or who she was."</p>
+
+<p>"We-ell&mdash;&mdash;would that be perlite?" asked Dot, doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. She asked our names. We don't know anything about her&mdash;and I <em>do</em>
+think she is so nice!"</p>
+
+<p>"So do I," agreed Dot. "And that gray cloak&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span>
+"With the pretty little bonnet and ruche," added Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"She isn't the Salvation Army," said Dot, remembering that that order
+was uniformed from seeing them on the streets of Bloomingsburg, where
+the Kenways had lived before they had fallen heir to Uncle Peter
+Stower's estate.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not!" Tess cried. "And she don't look like one o' those
+deaconesses that came to see Ethel Mumford's mother when she was
+sick&mdash;do you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I remember&mdash;everything!" said the positive Dot. "Wasn't I a
+great, big girl when we came to Milton to live?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;why," stammered her sister, not wishing to displease Dot, but
+bound to be honest. "You aren't a very big girl, even now, Dot Kenway."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" exclaimed Dot, quite vexed. "I wear bigger shoes and stockings,
+and Ruth is having Miss Ann Titus let down the hems of all my old
+dresses a full inch&mdash;so now!"</p>
+
+<p>"I expect you <em>have</em> grown some, Dot," admitted Tess, reflectively. "But
+you aren't big enough even now to brag about."</p>
+
+<p>The youngest Kenway might have been deeply offended by this&mdash;and shown
+that she had taken offence, too&mdash;had something new not taken her
+attention at the very moment she and Tess were entering the side gate of
+the old Corner House premises.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span>
+The house was a three story and attic mansion which was set well back
+from Main Street, but the side of which was separated from Willow Street
+by only a narrow strip of sward. The kitchen was in the wing nearest
+this last-named street, and there was a big, half-enclosed side porch,
+to which the woodshed was attached, and beyond which was the long grape
+arbor.</p>
+
+<p>The length of the old Corner House yard, running parallel with Willow
+Street, was much greater than its width. The garden, summer house,
+henhouses, and other outbuildings were at the back. The lawn in front
+was well shaded, and there were plenty of fruit trees around the house.
+Not many dwellings in Milton had as much yard-room as the Stower
+homestead.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh my, Tess!" gasped Dot, with deep interest, staring at the porch
+stoop. "Who is that&mdash;and what's he doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me!" returned Tess, hesitating at the gate. "That's Seneca
+Sprague&mdash;the man who wears a linen duster and straw hat all the year
+round, and 'most always goes barefooted. He&mdash;he isn't just right, they
+say, Dot."</p>
+
+<p>"Just right about what?" asked Dot.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy me, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, exasperated.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what <em>is</em> he?" asked Dot, with vigor.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I guess," said Tess, "that he thinks he is a minister. And, I do
+declare, I believe he's preaching to Sandyface and her kittens! Listen,
+Dot!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span>
+<a name="iii" id="iii"></a>CHAPTER III<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">BILLY BUMPS' BANQUET</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Almost</span> the first thing that would have caught the attention of the
+visitor to the old Corner House at almost any time, was the number of
+pets that hovered about that kitchen porch. Ruth, with a sigh, sometimes
+admitted that she was afraid she supported a menagerie.</p>
+
+<p>Just at this hour&mdash;it was approaching noon&mdash;Mrs. MacCall, or the girl
+who helped her in the kitchen, might be expected to appear at the door
+with a plate of scraps or vegetable peelings or a little spare milk or
+other delicacy to tempt the appetites of the dumb creatures that
+subsisted upon the kindness of the Corner House family.</p>
+
+<p>The birds, of course, got their share. In the winter the old Corner
+House was the rendezvous of a chattering throng of snow-buntings and
+sparrows and starlings, for the children tied suet and meat-bones to the
+branches of the fruit trees, as well as scattered crumbs upon the
+snow-crust. In summer the feathered beggars took toll as they pleased of
+the cherries and small fruits in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>In the garden, too, was the only martin house in town, set upon a tall
+pole. There every spring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span> a battle royal went on between the coming
+martins and the impudent sparrows, as the latter horde always
+appropriated the martin house during the absence of its proper owners in
+the South. Each cherry tree had its robin's nest&mdash;sometimes two. Mr.
+Robin likes to be near the supply of his favorite fruit. The wrens built
+under the eaves of the porch, and above the windows, in sheltered
+places. All the pigeons in the neighborhood flew here to strut and coo,
+and help eat any grain that might be thrown out.</p>
+
+<p>What one saw now, waiting at the porch steps, was principally a family
+of cats. There were no less than nine posing expectantly before the
+queer looking character known to Milton folks as Seneca Sprague.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, Sandyface, the speckled tabby-cat, sat placidly washing
+her face on the lower step. Close at her back, on the ground&mdash;one was
+even playing with its mother's steadily waving tail&mdash;was Sandyface's
+latest family, the four kittens bearing the remarkable names of
+Starboard, Port, Hard-a-lee and Mainsheet.</p>
+
+<p>Grouped farther away from the mother cat were the four well-grown young
+cats, Spotty, Almira, Popocatepetl and Bungle.</p>
+
+<p>Much farther in the background, and in the attitude of sleep, with his
+head on his forepaws, but with a blinking eye that lost nothing of what
+went on at the porch (for Mrs. MacCall might appear at any moment with
+his own particular<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span> dish) lay a big Newfoundland dog, with a noble head,
+intelligent brown eyes, and a muzzle now graying with age. This was the
+Corner House girls' newest and most valued pet, Tom Jonah.</p>
+
+<p>In addition, on the clothes-drying green, was Billy Bumps. This
+suggestively named individual was a sturdy, wise-looking goat, with a
+face and chin-whisker which Mrs. MacCall declared was "as long as the
+moral law," and whose proclivity to eat anything that could be
+masticated was well-known to the Kenway children.</p>
+
+<p>This collection of dumb pets the tall, lank, barefooted man in the
+broken straw hat and linen duster, now faced with a serious mien as
+though he were a real preacher and addressed a human congregation.</p>
+
+<p>Seneca Sprague was a harmless person, considered "not quite right," as
+Tess had said, by his fellow-townsmen. Whether his oddities arose from a
+distraught mind, or an indulgence in a love of publicity, it would be
+hard to say.</p>
+
+<p>His sharp-featured face and long, luxurious iron-gray hair, which he
+sometimes wore knotted up like a woman's, marked him wherever he went.
+Even those who thought him the possessor of a mind diseased agreed that
+he was quite harmless.</p>
+
+<p>He came and went as he pleased, often preaching on street corners a
+doctrine which included a belief in George Washington as a supernatural
+being; and he was patriotic to the core.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes bad boys made fun of him, and followed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span> and pelted him in the
+street; but, of course, the Corner House girls, who were kind to
+everybody and everything, would not have thought of harrying the queer
+old man, or ridiculing him.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally Seneca Sprague wrote and had printed a tract in which he
+ramblingly expressed his religious and patriotic beliefs, and an edition
+of this tract he was now selling from house to house in Milton. Ruth
+had, of course, purchased one and as Tess and Dot came into the old
+Corner House yard, Mr. Sprague was just turning away from the door, and
+had caught sight of the expectant congregation of pets gathered below
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Lo, and behold! lo, and behold!" ejaculated Seneca Sprague, in a solemn
+and resonant voice. "What saith the Scriptures? Him that hath ears to
+hear, let him hear."</p>
+
+<p>Every cat's ears were pricked forward expectantly and even Tom Jonah
+lifted his glossy ears&mdash;probably hearing Mrs. MacCall's step at the
+kitchen door. Billy Bumps lifted a ruminant head and blatted softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus saith the prophet," went on Seneca Sprague, in his sing-song tone.
+"There is yet a little time in which man may repent. Then cometh the
+Crack o' Doom! Beware! beware! beware!"</p>
+
+<p>Here Dot whispered to Tess: "How did Mr. Seneca Sprague come to know so
+much about prophets, and what's going to happen, and all that? And what
+<em>is</em> the Crack o' Doom?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span>
+"Mercy, I don't know, child!" exclaimed Tess. "I'm sure <em>I</em> didn't crack
+it."</p>
+
+<p>The queer old man was interrupted just here, too, by Ruth Kenway's
+reappearance upon the porch. Ruth was a very intelligent looking girl,
+if not exactly a pretty one. She was dark and her hair was black; she
+had warm, brown eyes and a sweet, steady smile that pleased most people.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Sprague!" she said, attracting that queer individual's
+attention. He actually swept off his torn straw hat and bowed before
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Ruth's voice was low and pleasant. Mrs. MacCall said she had an old head
+upon young shoulders. But there had been good reason for the oldest of
+the Corner House girls to show in her look and manner the effect of
+responsibility and burden of forethought beyond her years.</p>
+
+<p>Before the fortune had come to them the little Kenways had had only a
+small pension to exist upon, and they had had to share that with Aunt
+Sarah Maltby. For nearly two years Ruth had taken her mother's place and
+looked after the family.</p>
+
+<p>It had made her seem old beyond her real age; but it had likewise given
+her a confidence in herself which she otherwise would not have had.
+People deferred to Ruth Kenway; even Mr. Howbridge thought she was quite
+a wonderful girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Sprague," she said again. "I meant to tell you that you are
+welcome to some of those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span> fall pippins, down there by the hen-run&mdash;if
+you care to pick them up. Just help yourself. I know you don't use meat,
+and that you live on fruit and vegetables; and apples are hard to get at
+the store."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you&mdash;thank you," said the strange, old man, politely. "I will
+avail myself of the privilege you so kindly offer. It is true I live on
+the fruits of the earth wholly, for are we not commanded to shed no
+blood&mdash;no, not at all? Yea, verily, he who lives by the sword shall die
+by the sword&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And I hope you will like the pippins, Mr. Sprague," broke in Ruth,
+knowing how long-winded the old fellow was, and being cumbered by many
+cares herself just then.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! there you are, children," she added, addressing Tess and Dot. "Come
+right in and make ready for lunch. Don't let us keep Mrs. MacCall
+waiting. She and Linda are preserving to-day and they want to get the
+lunch over and out of the way."</p>
+
+<p>The smaller girls hastened into the house, thus admonished, and up to
+the dressing room connected with the two, big, double bedrooms in the
+other wing, which the four sisters had occupied ever since coming to the
+old Corner House. Ruth went with them to superintend the washing of
+hands and face, smoothing of hair and freshening of frocks and ribbons.
+Ruth had to act as inspector after the youngest Kenway's ablutions,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span>
+Tess declaring: "Dot doesn't always wash into all the corners."</p>
+
+<p>"I do, too, Tess Kenway!" cried the smaller girl. "Ruthie has to watch
+us 'cause <em>you</em> button your apron crooked. You know you do!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean to," said Tess, "but I can't see behind me. I'd like to be
+as neat looking all the time as that lady in the gray cloak. Oh, Ruthie!
+who was she?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no idea whom you are talking about," said the elder sister,
+curiously. "'The lady in the gray cloak'? What lady in a gray cloak?"</p>
+
+<p>At once Tess and Dot began to explain. They were both eager, they were
+both vociferous; and the particulars of the morning's adventure,
+including the meeting with Miss Pepperill, the falling of the telegraph
+pole, the woman in the gray cloak, and the sovereigns of England, became
+most remarkably mixed in the general relation of facts.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! Mercy, children!" cried Ruth, in despair. "Let us go at the
+matter in something like order. Why did the lady in the gray cloak want
+you to learn the succession of the sovereigns of England? And did the
+telegraph pole hit poor Miss Pepperill, or was she merely scared by its
+fall?"</p>
+
+<p>Tess stared at her older sister wonderingly. "Well, I do despair!" she
+breathed at last, repeating one of good Mrs. MacCall's odd exclamations.
+"I never did suppose you could misunderstand a body so, Ruthie Kenway."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span>
+Ruth threw back her head at that and laughed heartily. Then she
+endeavored to get at the meat in the nut by asking questions. Soon&mdash;by
+the time her little sisters were ready to descend to the dining
+room&mdash;Ruth had a fair idea of the happening and the reason for the
+interest Tess and Dot displayed in the identity of the woman in the gray
+cloak.</p>
+
+<p>But Ruth could not help the little ones to discover the name of the
+stranger. They all went down to dinner when Uncle Rufus rang the gong at
+the hall door.</p>
+
+<p>That front hall of the old Corner House was a vast place, with a gallery
+all around it at the level of the second story, out of which opened the
+"grand" bedrooms (only one of which had ever been occupied during the
+girls' occupancy of the house, and that by Aunt Sarah) and it had a
+broad staircase with beautifully carved balustrades.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Rufus was a tall (though stooped), lean and brown negro, with a
+fringe of snow-white wool around his brown, bald crown. He always
+appeared to serve at table in a long, claw-hammer coat, a white vest and
+trousers, and gray spats. He was the type of old Southern house servant
+one reads about, seldom finds in the North; and he had lived in the old
+Corner House and served Uncle Peter Stower "endurin' of twenty-four
+year," as he often boasted.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Rufus did much more than serve the table, care for the silver and
+linen, and perform<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span> the other duties of a butler. He was Ruth's chief
+assistant in and out of the house. Despite his age, and occasional
+attacks of rheumatism, he was "purty spry yit," according to his own
+statement. And since the Kenway girls had come to the old house, Uncle
+Rufus seemed to have taken a new lease on life.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Sarah Maltby was already in her place at the table when Ruth and
+the two smaller girls entered the dining room. She was a withered wisp
+of a woman, with bright brown eyes under rather heavy brows. There were
+three deep wrinkles between her eyes; otherwise Aunt Sarah did not show
+in her countenance many of the ravages of time.</p>
+
+<p>Her hair was only a little frosted; she wore it crimped on the sides,
+doing it up carefully in little "pigtails" every night before she
+retired. She was scrupulous in the care of her hands, being one of those
+old ladies who almost never are seen bare-handed&mdash;wearing mits or gloves
+on all occasions.</p>
+
+<p>Her plainly made dresses were starched and prim in every particular. She
+was a spinster who never told her age, and defied the public to guess
+it! Living a sort of detached life in the Kenway family, nothing went on
+in domestic affairs of which she was not aware; yet she was seldom
+helpful in any emergency. Usually, if she interfered at all, it was at a
+time when Ruth could have well excused her assistance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span>
+Aunt Sarah had chosen the best bedroom in the house when first they had
+come to Milton to live; and, as well, she had the best there was to be
+had of everything else. She had, all her life, lived selfishly, been
+waited upon, and considered her own comfort first. It was too late now
+for Aunt Sarah to change in many particulars.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. MacCall bustled in from the kitchen, her face rather red and a
+burned stripe on her forearm which she had floured over to take out the
+smart. "Always get burned when I am driv' like I be to-day," declared
+the housekeeper, whom Ruth insisted should always eat at their table.
+Mrs. MacCall was much more than an ordinary houseworker; she was the
+friend and confidant of the Kenway sisters, and was nearer to all their
+hearts than was stiff and almost wordless Aunt Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>"Do <em>you</em> know who the lady in the gray cloak is?" asked Tess, of Mrs.
+MacCall, having put the question fruitlessly to both Uncle Rufus and
+Aunt Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that&mdash;a conundrum?" asked the housekeeper. "Don't bother me,
+child, with questions to-day. I've got too much on my mind."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess," sighed Tess to Dot, "we never <em>shall</em> find out who she is."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mind," said the comforting Dorothy. "She gave you the list of
+sov-runs. You've got them, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"But I <em>do</em> mind!" declared Tess. "She is just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span> one of the nicest ladies
+I ever met. Of course I want&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But who is this bursting into the dining room like a young cyclone, and
+late to lunch? "Oh, Agnes! you are late again," said Ruth,
+admonishingly. Aunt Sarah glared at the newcomer, while Mrs. MacCall
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"You come pretty near not getting anything more than cold pieces,
+child."</p>
+
+<p>All their wrath was turned, however, by Agnes' smile&mdash;and her beauty.
+Nobody&mdash;not even Aunt Sarah Maltby&mdash;could retain a scowl and still look
+at Agnes Kenway, plump and pretty, and brown from the sea air and sun.
+Naturally she was light, blue-eyed and with golden-yellow hair. The hair
+was sunburned now and her round cheeks were as brown as fall leaves in
+the woods.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear! I couldn't really help being late," she said, dropping into
+the seat Uncle Rufus pulled out for her. The old darkey began at once
+heaping her plate with tidbits. He all but worshipped Ruth; but Agnes he
+petted and spoiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help being late," she repeated. "What do you think, Ruth?
+Eva Larry was just telling me at the front gate that Mr. Marks has
+threatened to forfeit all the basket ball games our team won in the
+half-series last spring against the other teams of the Milton County
+League, and will refuse to let us play the series out this fall. Isn't
+that <em>awful</em>?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said Ruth, placidly; she was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span> not a basket ball
+enthusiast herself. But Agnes had secured a place on the first team of
+the Milton Schools a few weeks before the June closing. She was
+athletic, and, although only in the grammar grade then, was big and
+strong for her age.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know just how awful it is," repeated the oldest sister. "What
+have you all done that the principal should make that ruling?"</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness knows!" wailed Agnes. "I'm sure <em>I</em> haven't done anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you haven't, Aggie," put in Dot, warmly. "You never <em>do</em>!"</p>
+
+<p>This made the family laugh. Dot's loyalty to Agnes was really
+phenomenal. No matter what Agnes did, it must be all right in the little
+one's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't care," repeated Dot, sturdily, "Agnes is awful good!
+'Course, not the same goodness as Ruthie; but I know she doesn't break
+any school rules. And she knows a lot!"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish she knew who my gray lady is," put in Tess, rather
+complainingly.</p>
+
+<p>"What gray lady?" demanded Agnes, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Dot, the voluble, got ahead of her sister in this explanation. "She
+isn't the Salvation Army, nor she isn't a deaconess like Mrs. Mumford
+had come to see her; but she's something awfully religious, I know."</p>
+
+<p>Tess managed to tell again about the sovereigns of England, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know whom you mean," Agnes said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span> briskly. "I saw her with you up
+on the Parade. Eva Larry told me she was the matron of the Women's and
+Children's Hospital&mdash;and they're going to shut it up."</p>
+
+<p>"The child means Mrs. Eland," said Mrs. MacCall, interestedly. "She is a
+splendid woman and that hospital is doing a great work. You don't mean
+they are really going to close it, Agnes?"</p>
+
+<p>"So Eva says. They have to. There are no funds, and two or three rich
+people who used to help them every year have died without leaving the
+hospital any legacy. Mrs. Eland doesn't know what will become of her
+now. She's been matron and acting superintendent ever since the hospital
+was opened, five years ago. Dr. Forsyth is the head visiting physician."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, child!" gasped Ruth. "Where <em>do</em> you pick up so much gossip?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eva Larry has been here," said Tess, soberly. "And, you know, she's a
+fluid talker. You said so yourself, Ruthie."</p>
+
+<p>"Fluent! fluent!" gasped Agnes. "And Eva always does have the news."</p>
+
+<p>"She is growing up to be a second Miss Ann Titus," said Ruth drily. "And
+I think Tess got it about right. She <em>is</em> a fluid speaker. When Eva
+talks it is just like opening the spigot and letting the water run."</p>
+
+<p>It was later, after lunch was over, and Tess and Dot had wandered into
+the garden with their dolls. Tess said, reflectively:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span>
+"I wish awfully we might help that Mrs. Eland. She's such a lovely lady.
+And I know the sovereigns of England half by heart already."</p>
+
+<p>Dot was usually practical. "Let's gather her some apples and take them
+to her," she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"We-ell," said Tess, slowly. "That won't keep the hospital going, but
+maybe she likes apples."</p>
+
+<p>"Who doesn't?" demanded Dot, stoutly. "Come on."</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the fall pippin tree which, that year, was loaded with
+golden fruit, the two little girls were quite startled at what they saw.</p>
+
+<p>"O-o-oh!" gasped Dot. "See Billy Bumps!"</p>
+
+<p>"For pity's sake! what's he doing?" rejoined Tess, in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>The old goat had the freedom of the yard, as the garden was shut away
+from him by a strong wire fence. He liked apples himself, did Billy
+Bumps, and perhaps he considered the bagful that Mr. Seneca Sprague had
+picked up and prepared to carry away, a direct poaching upon his
+preserves.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sprague had reclined on the soft grass under the wide-spreading tree
+and filled his own stomach to repletion, as could be seen by the cores
+thrown out in a circle about him. Billy Bumps had approached, eyed the
+long hair of the "prophet" askance, and finally began to nibble.</p>
+
+<p>The luxuriant growth of hair that the odd, old man had allowed to grow
+for years, seemed to attract Billy <a name="Bumps" id="Bumps"></a><ins title="Bump's changed to Bumps'">Bumps'</ins> palate.
+Mr. Seneca Sprague<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span> slept and Billy gently nibbled at the hair on one
+side of Seneca's head.</p>
+
+<p>It was just at this moment that Tess and Dot spied the tableau. Billy
+Bumps browsing on Seneca Sprague's hair was a sight to startle and amaze
+anybody.</p>
+
+<p>"O-o-oh!" gasped Dot again.</p>
+
+<p>"Billy! you mustn't!" shrieked Tess, realizing that all of the
+"prophet's" hair was in danger, and fearing, perhaps, that, snake-like,
+Billy might be about gradually to draw the whole of Mr. Seneca Sprague
+within his capacious maw.</p>
+
+<p>"Billy! stop!" cried both girls together.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Mr. Sprague awoke. Between the shrieking of the little
+girls and the activities of Mr. Sprague when he learned what was going
+on, Billy Bumps' banquet was quite spoiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Get out, you beast!" shouted the "prophet," but using most
+unprophetical language. "Ow! ow! ouch!"</p>
+
+<p>For Billy had no idea of losing what he had already masticated. He
+pulled so hard that he drew Mr. Sprague over on his back, where he lay
+with his legs kicking in the air, wild yells of surprise and pain
+issuing from him.</p>
+
+<p>Over the fence at the rear of the Corner House premises bobbed a flaxen
+head, and a boyish voice shouted: "What's the matter, girls?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neale O'Neil!" shrieked Dot. "Do come! Quick! Billy Bumps is eating
+up Mr. Sneaker Sp'ague&mdash;and he's beginning at his hair."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span>
+<a name="iv" id="iv"></a>CHAPTER IV<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE BASKET BALL TEAM IN TROUBLE</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Billy Bumps</span> backed away in time to escape the vigorous blow Neale O'Neil
+aimed at him with the stick he had picked up. But the old goat had
+managed to tear loose some of the hair on one side of the odd, old
+fellow's head, and now stood contemplating the angry and excited
+Sprague, with the hair hanging out of his mouth and mingling with his
+own long beard.</p>
+
+<p>"Shorn of my locks! shorn of my locks! Samson has lost his glory and
+strength&mdash;yea, verily!" cried the owner of the hair, mournfully. "Yea,
+how hath the mighty fallen and the people imagined a vain thing! And if
+there were anything here hard enough to throw at that old goat!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus getting down to a more practical and modern form of language,
+Seneca Sprague looked wrathfully around for a club or a rock, nothing
+less being sufficiently hard to suit him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you mustn't!" cried Dot. "Poor Billy Bumps doesn't know any better.
+Why, once he chewed up my Alice-doll's best dress. And <em>I</em> didn't hit
+him for it!"</p>
+
+<p>A comparison of a doll's dress with his own hair did not please Mr.
+Sprague much. He shook<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span> his now ragged head, from which the lock of hair
+had been torn so roughly. Billy Bumps considered this a challenge and,
+lowering his horns, suddenly charged the despoiled prophet.</p>
+
+<p>"Drat the beast!" yelled Seneca, forgetting his Scriptural language
+entirely; and leaped into the air just in time to make a passage for
+Billy Bumps between his long legs.</p>
+
+<p>Neale, for laughter, could not help.</p>
+
+<p>Slam! went Billy's horns against the end of the hen-house. Mr. Sprague
+was not there to catch the goat on the rebound, for, leaving his bag of
+apples, he rushed for the side gate and got out upon Willow Street
+without much regard for the order of his going, voicing prophecies this
+time that had only to do with Billy Bumps' immediate future.</p>
+
+<p>The disturbance brought Ruth and Agnes running from the house, but only
+in time to see the wrathful Seneca Sprague, his linen duster flapping
+behind him, as he disappeared along Willow Street. When Ruth heard about
+Billy Bumps' banquet, she sent the bag of apples to Seneca Sprague's
+little shanty which he occupied, down on the river dock.</p>
+
+<p>"Of all the ridiculous things a goat ever did, that is the most
+ridiculous!" exclaimed Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"There's more than one hair in the butter this time," repeated Neale
+O'Neil, with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't laugh, even at that stale joke," sighed Agnes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span>
+"What's the matter, Aggie?" demanded Neale. "Have you soured on the
+world completely?"</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as though I had," confessed Agnes, her sweet eyes vastly
+troubled and her red lips in a pout. "What do you think, Neale?"</p>
+
+<p>"A whole lot of things," returned the boy. "What do you want me to
+think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Smartie! But tell me: Have you heard anything about our basket ball
+team being set back? Eva told me she'd heard Mr. Marks was dreadfully
+displeased at something we'd done and that he said we shouldn't win the
+pennant."</p>
+
+<p>"Not win the pennant?" cried Neale, aghast. "Why, you girls have got it
+cinched!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not if Mr. Marks declares all the games we won last spring forfeited. I
+think he's too, too mean!" cried Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he wouldn't do that!" urged Neale.</p>
+
+<p>"She says he is going to."</p>
+
+<p>"<a name="Eva" id="Eva"></a><ins title="Eva changed to Eve">Eva</ins> Larry doesn't always get things straight," said
+Neale, comfortingly. "But what does he do it for?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I'm sure <em>I</em> haven't done anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not!" chuckled her boy friend, looking at her rather
+roguishly. "Who was it proposed that raid on old Buckham's strawberry
+patch that time, coming home from Fleeting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! he couldn't know about that," cried Agnes, actually turning pale at
+the suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Neale said slowly. "Trix<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span> Severn was in your crowd then,
+and she'd tell anything if she got mad."</p>
+
+<p>"And she's mad all right," groaned Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe she is&mdash;with you Corner House girls," added Neale O'Neil.</p>
+
+<p>"She'd be telling on herself&mdash;the mean thing!" snapped Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"But she is not on the team. She was along only as a rooter. The
+electric car broke down alongside of Buckham's strawberry patch. Wasn't
+that it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-huh," admitted Agnes. "And the berries <em>did</em> look so tempting."</p>
+
+<p>"You girls got into Buckham's best berries," chuckled Neale. "I heard he
+was quite wild about it."</p>
+
+<p>"We didn't take many. And I really didn't think about it's being
+stealing," Agnes said slowly. "We just did it for a lark."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. 'Didn't mean to' is an old excuse," retorted the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Buckham couldn't have known about it then," cried Agnes. "I
+don't believe Mr. Marks heard of it through him. If he had, why not
+before this time, after months have gone by?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know. It's all blown over and forgotten, when up it pops again.
+'Murder will out,' they say. But you girls only murdered a few
+strawberries. It looks to me," added Neale O'Neil, "as though somebody
+was trying to get square."</p>
+
+<p>"Get square with <em>whom</em>?" demanded Agnes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span>
+"Well&mdash;you were all in it, weren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"All the team?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so. But Trix and some of the others picked and ate quite as
+many berries as we did. The girls that went over to Fleeting to root for
+us were all in it, too."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," Neale said. "If the farmer had been sure who you were, or any
+of the electric car men had told&mdash;&mdash; Had the car all to yourselves,
+didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"We girls were the only passengers," said Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Then make up your mind to it," the wise Neale rejoined, "that if Mr.
+Marks has only recently been told of the raid, some girl has been
+blabbing. The farmer or the conductor or the motorman would have told at
+once. They wouldn't have waited until three months and more had passed."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, Neale! do you think that?"</p>
+
+<p>"It looks just like a mean girl's trick. Some telltale," returned the
+boy, in disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"Trix Severn might do it, I s'pose, because she doesn't like me any
+more."</p>
+
+<p>"You remember what Mr. Marks told us all last spring when we grammar
+grade fellows were let into the high school athletics? He said that
+one's conduct outside of school would govern the amount of latitude he
+would allow us in school athletics. I guess he meant you girls, too."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span>
+"He's an awfully strict old thing!" complained Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me," pursued Neale O'Neil, "that once a part of the baseball
+nine played hookey to go swimming at Ryer's Ford, and Mr. Marks
+immediately forfeited all the games in the Inter-scholastic League for
+that year, and so punished the whole school."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not fair!" exploded Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether it is or not. But I know the baseball captain this
+year was mighty strict with us fellows."</p>
+
+<p>The topic of the promised punishment of the basket ball team for an old
+offense was discussed almost as much at the Corner House that evening as
+was the "lady in gray" and the sovereigns of England.</p>
+
+<p>Tess kept these last subjects alive, for she was studying the rhyme and
+would try to recite it to everybody that would listen&mdash;including Linda,
+who scarcely understood ten words of English, and Sandyface and her
+family, gathered for their supper in the woodshed. Tess was troubled
+about the closing of the Women's and Children's Hospital, because of its
+effect upon Mrs. Eland, too.</p>
+
+<div class="poemblock">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="io">"'First William, the Norman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then William, the son;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Henry, Stephen and&mdash;&mdash;'<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">I do hope," ruminated Tess, "that that poor Mrs. Eland won't be turned
+out of her place. Don't you hope so, Ruthie?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>
+"I am sure it would be a calamity if the hospital were closed," agreed
+the older sister. "And the matron must be a very lovely lady, as you
+say, Tess."</p>
+
+<p>"She is awfully nice&mdash;isn't she, Dot?" pursued Tess, who usually
+expected the support of Dorothy.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as nice as she can be," agreed the smallest Corner House girl.
+"Couldn't she come to live in our house if she can't stay in the
+horsepistol any longer?"</p>
+
+<p>"At the <em>what</em>, child?" gasped Agnes. "What is it you said?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;where she lives now," Dot responded, dodging the doubtful word.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness, dear!" laughed Ruth, "we can't make the old Corner House a
+refuge for destitute females."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care!" spoke up Dot, quickly. "Didn't they make the
+Toomey-Smith house, on High Street into a home for indignant old maids?"</p>
+
+<p>At that the older girls shouted with laughter.
+"'In-di-gent'&mdash;'in-di-gent'! child," corrected Agnes, at last. "That
+means without means&mdash;poor&mdash;unable to care for themselves. 'Indignant old
+maids,' indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe they <em>were</em> indignant," suggested Tess, too tender hearted to see
+Dot's ignorance exposed in public, despite her own private criticism of
+the little one's misuse of the English language. "See<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span> how indignant
+Aunt Sarah is&mdash;and <em>she's</em> an old maid."</p>
+
+<p>This amused Ruth and Agnes even more than Dot's observation. It was true
+that Aunt Sarah Maltby was frequently "an indignant old maid."</p>
+
+<p>But Tess endured the laughter calmly. She was deeply interested in the
+problem of Mrs. Eland's future, and she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe Uncle Peter ought to have left the hospital some of his money
+when he died, instead of leaving it all to us and to Aunt Sarah."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to give up some of your monthly allowance to help support
+the hospital, Tess?" demanded Ruth, briskly.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash; Well, I couldn't give <em>much</em>," said the smaller girl,
+seriously, "for a part of it goes to missions and the Sunday School
+money box, and part to Sadie Goronofsky's cousin who has a nawful bad
+felon, and can't work on the paper flowers just now&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, child!" the oldest Kenway said, with a tender smile, and putting
+her hand lightly on Tess' head, "I didn't know about that. How much of
+your pin money goes each month to charity already? You only have a
+dollar and a half."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I keep half a dollar for myself," confessed Tess. "I could give part
+of that to the hospital."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll give some of my pin money, too," announced Dot, gravely, "if it
+will keep Mrs. Eland from being turned out of the horsepistol."</p>
+
+<p>Ruth and Agnes did not chide the little one for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span> her mispronunciation of
+the hard word this time, but they looked at each other seriously. "I
+wonder if Uncle Peter was one of those rich people who should have
+remembered the institution in his will?" Ruth said.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness!" exclaimed Agnes. "If we go around hunting for duties Uncle
+Peter Stower left undone, and do them for him, where will <em>we</em> be? There
+will be no money left for ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"You need not be afraid," Ruth said, with a smile. "Mr. Howbridge will
+not let us use our money foolishly. He is answerable for every penny of
+it to the Court. But maybe he will approve of our giving a proper sum
+towards a fund for keeping the Women's and Children's Hospital open."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there such a fund?" demanded Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"There will be, I think. If everybody is interested&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And how you going to interest 'em?" asked the skeptical Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Talk about it! Publicity! That is what is needed," declared Ruth,
+vigorously. "Why! we might all do something."</p>
+
+<p>"Who&mdash;all? I want to know!" responded her sister. "I don't have a cent
+more than I need for myself. Only two dollars and a half." Agnes'
+allowance had been recently increased half a dollar by the observant
+lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"All of us can help," said Ruth. "Boys and girls alike, as well as grown
+people. The schools<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span> ought to do something to raise money for the
+hospital's support."</p>
+
+<p>"Like a fair, maybe&mdash;or a bazaar," cried Agnes, eagerly. "That ought to
+be fun."</p>
+
+<p>"You are always looking for fun," said Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care. If we can combine business with pleasure, so much the
+better," laughed Agnes. "It's easier to do things that are amusing than
+those that are dead serious."</p>
+
+<p>"There you go!" sighed Ruth. "You are becoming the slangiest girl. I
+believe you get it all from Neale O'Neil."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Neale!" sniffed Agnes, regretfully. "He gets blamed for all my
+sins and his own, too. If I had a wooden arm, Ruth, you'd say I caught
+it of him, you detest boys so."</p>
+
+<p>Part of this conversation between her older sisters must have made a
+deep impression on Tess Kenway's mind. She went forth as an apostle for
+the Women's and Children's Hospital, and for Mrs. Eland in particular.
+She said to Mr. Stetson, their groceryman, the next morning, with
+profound gravity:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Mr. Stetson, that the Women's and Children's Hospital has
+got to be closed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no, Tess&mdash;is that so?" he said, staring at her. "What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because there is no money to pay Mrs. Eland. And now she won't have any
+home."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Eland?"</p>
+
+<p>"The matron, you know. And she's such a nice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span> lady," pursued Tess. "She
+taught me the sovereigns of England."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stetson might have laughed. He was frequently vastly amused by the
+queer sayings and doings of the two youngest Corner House girls, as he
+often told his wife and Myra. But on this occasion Tess was so serious
+that to laugh at her would have hurt her feelings. Mr. Stetson expressed
+his regret regarding the calamity which had overtaken Mrs. Eland and the
+hospital. He had never thought of the institution before, and said to
+his wife that he supposed they "might spare a trifle toward such a good
+cause."</p>
+
+<p>Tess carried her tale of woe into another part of the town when she and
+Dot went with their dolls to call on Mrs. Kranz and Maria Maroni, on
+Meadow Street, where the Stower tenement property was located.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know about the Women's and Children's Hospital being shut up,
+Mrs. Kranz?" Tess asked that huge woman, who kept the neatest and
+cleanest of delicatessen and grocery stores possible. "And Mrs. Eland
+can't stay there."</p>
+
+<p>"Ach! you dond't tell me!" exclaimed the German woman. "Ist dodt so? And
+vor vy do dey close de hospital yedt? Aind't it a goot vun?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it must be a very good one," Tess said soberly, "for Mrs. Eland
+is an awfully nice lady, and she is the matron. She taught me the
+sovereigns of England. I'll recite them for you." This she proceeded to
+do.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span>
+"Very goot! very goot!" announced Mrs. Kranz. "Maria can't say that
+yedt."</p>
+
+<p>Maria Maroni, the very pretty Italian girl (she was about Agnes' age)
+who helped Mrs. Kranz in the store, laughed good-naturedly. "I guess I
+knew them once," she said. "But I have forgotten. I never like any
+history but 'Merican history, and that of Italy."</p>
+
+<p>"Ach! you foreigners are all alike," Mrs. Kranz protested, considering
+herself a bred-in-the-bone American, having lived in the country so
+long.</p>
+
+<p>Although she was scolding her brisk and pretty little assistant most of
+the time, she really loved Maria Maroni very dearly. Maria's mother and
+father&mdash;with their fast growing family&mdash;lived in the cellar of the same
+building in which was Mrs. Kranz's shop. Joe Maroni, as was shown by the
+home-made sign at the cellar door, sold</p>
+
+<p class="center big">ISE COLE WOOD VGERTABLS</p>
+
+<p>and was a smiling, voluble Italian, in a velveteen suit and cap, with
+gold rings in his ears, who never set his bright, black eyes upon one of
+the Corner House girls but he immediately filled a basket with his
+choicest fruit as a gift for "da leetla padrona," as he called Ruth
+Kenway. He had an offering ready for Tess and Dot to take home when they
+reappeared from Mrs. Kranz's back parlor.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you, Mr. Maroni," Tess said, while<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span> Dot allowed one of the
+smaller Maronis to hold the Alice-doll for a blissful minute. "I know
+Ruthie will be delighted."</p>
+
+<p>"Si! si! <em>dee</em>-lighted!" exclaimed Joe, showing all his very white teeth
+under his brigand's mustache. "The leetla T'eressa ees seek?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Mr. Maroni!" denied Tess, with a sigh. "I am very well. But I
+feel very bad in my mind. They are going to close the Women's and
+Children's Hospital and my friend, Mrs. Eland, who is the matron, will
+have no place to go."</p>
+
+<p>Joe looked a little puzzled, for although Maria and some of her brothers
+and sisters went to school, their father did not understand or speak
+English very well. Tess patiently explained about the good work the
+hospital did and why Mrs. Eland was in danger of losing her position.</p>
+
+<p>"Too bad-a! si! si!" ejaculated the sympathetic Italian. "We mak-a da
+good mon' now. We geev somet'ing to da hospital for da poor leetla
+children&mdash;<em>si! si!</em>"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, will you, Mr. Maroni?" cried Tess. "Ruth says there ought to be a
+fund started for the hospital. I'll tell her you'll give to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure! you tell-a leetla padrona. Joe geeve&mdash;sure!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dot! we can int'rest lots of folks&mdash;just as Ruth said," Tess
+declared, as the two little girls wended their way homeward. "We'll talk
+to everybody we know about the hospital and Mrs. Eland."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>
+To this end Tess even opened the subject with Uncle Rufus' daughter,
+Petunia Blossom, who chanced to be at the old Corner House when Tess and
+Dot arrived, delivering the clothes which she washed each week for the
+Kenways.</p>
+
+<p>Petunia Blossom was an immensely fat negress&mdash;and most awfully black.
+Uncle Rufus often said: "How come Pechunia so brack is de mysteriest
+mystery dat evah was. She done favah none o' ma folkses, nor her
+mammy's. She harks back t' some ol' antsistah dat was suttenly mighty
+brack&mdash;yaas'm!"</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno as I kin spar' anyt'ing fo' dis hospital, honey," Petunia said,
+seriously, when Tess broached the subject. "It's a-costin' me a lot t'
+keep up ma dues wid de Daughters of Miriam."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the Daughters of Miriam, Petunia?" asked Agnes, who chanced to
+overhear this conversation on the back porch. "Is it a lodge?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hit's mo' dan a lodge, Miss Aggie," proclaimed Petunia, with pride.
+"It's a beneficial ordah&mdash;yaas'm!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what benefit do you derive from it?" queried Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I doesn't git nottin' f'om it yet awhile, honey," said Petunia,
+unctiously. "But w'en I's daid, I gits one hunderd an' fifty dollahs.
+Same time, dey's 'bleeged t' tend ma funeral."</p>
+
+<p>"Dat brack woman suah is a flickaty female," grumbled Uncle Rufus, when
+he heard Agnes repeating the story of Petunia's "benefit" to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span> family
+at dinner that night. When nobody but the immediate family was present
+at table, Uncle Rufus assumed the privilege of discussing matters with
+the girls. "She's allus wastin' her money on sech things. Dere, she has
+got t' die t' git her benefit out'n dem Daughters of Miriam. She's
+mighty flickaty."</p>
+
+<p>"What does 'flickaty' mean, Uncle Rufus, if you please?" asked Dot,
+hearing a new word, and rather liking the sound of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, chile, dat jes' mean <em>flickaty</em>&mdash;das all," returned the old
+butler, chuckling. "Dah ain't nottin' in de langwidge what kin explanify
+dat wo'd. Nor dah ain't no woman, brack or w'ite, mo' flickaty dan dat
+same Pechunia Blossom."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>
+<a name="v" id="v"></a>CHAPTER V<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE STONE IN THE POOL</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Great</span> oaks from little acorns grow." Tess Kenway, with her little,
+serious effort, had no idea what she was starting for the benefit of
+Mrs. Eland, and incidentally for the neglected Women's and Children's
+Hospital. And this benefit was not of the unpractical character for
+which Petunia Blossom was paying premiums into the treasury of the
+Daughters of Miriam!</p>
+
+<p>Tess' advertisement, wherever she went, of the hospital's need, called
+the attention of many heretofore thoughtless people to it. Through Mr.
+Stetson and Mrs. Kranz many people were reminded of the institution that
+had already done such good work. They said, "It would be a shame to
+close that hospital. Something ought to be done about it."</p>
+
+<p>Tess Kenway's word was like a stone dropped into a placid pool. The
+water stirred by the plunge of the stone spreads in wavelets in an ever
+widening circle till it compasses the entire pool. So with the little
+Corner House girl's earnest speech regarding the hospital's need of
+funds.</p>
+
+<p>Tess and Dot did not see the woman in the gray cloak again&mdash;not just
+then, at least; but they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span> thought about her a great deal, and talked
+about her, too. A bag of the pippins went to the hospital by Neale
+O'Neil's friendly hand, addressed to Mrs. Eland, and with the names of
+the two youngest Corner House girls inside.</p>
+
+<p>"I do hope she likes apples," Tess said. "I'm <em>so</em> much obliged to her
+for the sovereigns of England."</p>
+
+<p>Tess wondered, too, if she should take some of the apples to school that
+first day of the fall term to present to Miss Pepperill. Dot took <em>her</em>
+teacher some. Dot was to have the same teacher this term that she had
+had the last. Tess finally decided that the sharp and red-haired Miss
+Pepperill might think that she, Tess, was trying to bribe her to forget
+the sovereigns of England.</p>
+
+<p>"And I am quite sure I know them perfectly. That is, if she doesn't fuss
+me too much when she asks the question," Tess said to Ruth, with whom
+she discussed the point. "I won't take her the apples, I guess, until
+after I have recited the sovereigns."</p>
+
+<p>Despite the declaration that she had learned perfectly the rhyme Mrs.
+Eland had written out for her, Tess Kenway went into school that first
+day of the term feeling very sober indeed. Many of the girls in her
+class looked sober, too. Pupils who had graduated from Miss Pepperill's
+class had reported the red-haired lady as being "awfully strict."</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, before the scholars were quite settled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span> at their desks, they had
+a proof of Miss Pepperill's discipline. Some of the boys in Tess' class
+had reputations to maintain (or thought they had) for "not bein' scart
+of teacher." Sammy Pinkney often boasted to wondering and wide-eyed
+little girls that "no old teacher could make him a fraid cat."</p>
+
+<p>"What's your name&mdash;you with the black hair and warts on your hands?"
+demanded the new teacher, sharply and suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>She pointed directly at the grinning and inattentive Sammy. There was no
+mistaking Miss Pepperill's meaning and some of the other boys giggled,
+for Sammy did have warts on his grimy little paws.</p>
+
+<p>"What's your name?" repeated the teacher, with rising inflection.</p>
+
+<p>"Sam&mdash;Sam Pinkney," replied Sammy, just a little startled, but trying to
+appear brave.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand up when you reply to a question!" snapped Miss Pepperill.</p>
+
+<p>Sammy stumbled to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Now! What is your name? Again."</p>
+
+<p>"Sam Pinkney."</p>
+
+<p>"Sam-u-e-l?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;that's 'Sam,' ain't it?" drawled the boy, gaining courage.</p>
+
+<p>But he never spoke so again when Miss Pepperill addressed him. That
+woman strode down the aisle to Sammy's seat, seized the cringing boy by
+the lobe of his right ear, and marched him up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span> to her desk. There she
+sat him down "in the seat of penitence" beside her own chair, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll attend to your case later, young man. Evidently the long vacation
+has done you no good. You have forgotten how to speak to your teacher."</p>
+
+<p>The girls were much disturbed by this manifestation of the new teacher's
+sternness. Sadie Goronofsky whispered to Tess:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! don't she get excited easy?"</p>
+
+<p>The whites of Alfredia Blossom's eyes were fairly enlarged by her
+surprise and terror at this proceeding on the new teacher's part. After
+that, Alfredia jumped every time Miss Pepperill spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Pepperill noted none of this cringing terror on the part of her new
+pupils. Or else she was used to it. She marched up and down the aisles,
+seating and reseating the pupils until she had them arranged to her
+satisfaction, and suddenly she pounced on Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" she said, stopping before the Corner House girl's desk. "You are
+Theresa Kenway?"</p>
+
+<p>Tess arose before replying. "Yes, ma'am," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Didn't I give you a question to answer this first day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am," replied Tess, trying to speak calmly.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Pepperill evidently expected to find Tess at fault. "What was the
+question, Theresa?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>
+"You told me to be prepared to recite for you the succession of the
+sovereigns of England."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, are you prepared?" snapped Miss Pepperill.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am," Tess said waveringly. "I learned them in a rhyme, Miss
+Pepperill. It was the only way I could remember them all&mdash;and in the
+proper succession. May I recite them that way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me hear the rhyme," commanded the teacher.</p>
+
+<p>Tess began in a shaking voice, but as she progressed she gained
+confidence in the sound of her own voice, and, knowing the rhyme
+perfectly, she came through the ordeal well.</p>
+
+<p>"Who taught you that, Theresa?" demanded Miss Pepperill, not unkindly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Eland wrote it down for me. She said she learned it so when she
+was a little girl. At least, all but the last four lines. She said
+<em>they</em> were 'riginal."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I should say they were," said Miss Pepperill. "And who is Mrs.
+Eland?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Eland is an awfully nice lady," Tess said eagerly, accepting the
+opening the teacher unwittingly gave her. "She is matron of the Women's
+and Children's Hospital, and do you <em>know</em>, they say they are going to
+close the hospital because there aren't enough funds, and poor Mrs.
+Eland won't have any place to go. We think it's dreadful and, Miss
+Pepperill,&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span>
+"Well, well!" interposed Miss Pepperill, with a grim smile, "that will
+do now, Theresa. I have heard all about that. I fancy you must be the
+little girl who is going around telling everybody about it. I heard Mr.
+Marks speak this morning about the needs of the Women's and Children's
+Hospital.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll excuse your further remarks on that subject, Theresa. But you
+recited the succession of the English sovereigns very well indeed. I,
+too, learned that rhyme when I was a little girl."</p>
+
+<p>Tess thought the bespectacled teacher said this last rather more
+sympathetically. She felt rebuked, however, and tried to keep a watch on
+her tongue thereafter in Miss Pepperill's presence.</p>
+
+<p>At least, she felt that she had comported herself well with the rhyme,
+and settled back into her seat with a feeling of thankfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Pepperill's mention of Mr. Marks' observation before the teachers
+regarding the little girl who was preaching the gospel of help for the
+hospital, made no impression at all on Tess Kenway's mind. She had no
+idea that she had made so many grown people think of the institution's
+needs.</p>
+
+<p>Before the high school classes early in that first week of school, the
+principal incorporated in his welcoming remarks something of importance
+regarding this very thing.</p>
+
+<p>"We open school this term with quite a novel proposal before us. It has
+not yet been sanctioned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span> by the Board of Education, although I
+understand that that body is soon to have it under advisement. In
+several towns of Milton's size and importance, there were last winter
+presented spectacles and musical plays, mainly by the pupils of the
+public schools of the several towns, and always for worthy charitable
+objects.</p>
+
+<p>"The benefit to be gained by the schools in general and by the pupils
+that took part in the plays in particular, looked very doubtful to me at
+a distance; but this summer I made it my business to examine into the
+results of such appearances in musical pieces by pupils of other
+schools. I find it develops their dramatic instinct and an appreciation
+of music and acting. It gives vent, too, to the natural desire of young
+people to dance and sing, and to 'act out' a pleasant story, while they
+are really helping a worthy work of charity.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the most successful of these school plays is called <em>The
+Carnation Countess</em>. It is a play with music which lends itself to
+brilliant costuming, spectacular scenery, and offers many minor parts
+which can easily be filled by you young people. A small company of
+professional players and singers carry the principal parts in <em>The
+Carnation Countess</em>; but if we are allowed to take up the production of
+this play&mdash;say in holiday week&mdash;I promise you that every one who feels
+the desire to do so, may have a part in it.</p>
+
+<p>"The matter is all unsettled at present. But it is something to think
+of. Besides, a very small<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span> girl, I understand, a pupil in our grammar
+grade, is preaching a crusade for Milton's Women's and Children's
+Hospital. Inspired or not, that child has, during the past few days,
+awakened many people of this town to their duty towards that very
+estimable institution.</p>
+
+<p>"The Women's and Children's Hospital is poor. It needs funds. Indeed, it
+is about to be closed for lack of sufficient means to pay salaries and
+buy supplies. The <em>Post</em> has several times tried to awaken public
+interest in the institution, but to no avail.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, this child, as I have said, has done more than the public press.
+And quite unconsciously, I have no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the way great things are often done. The seed timidly sown
+often brings forth the abundant crop. The stone thrown into the middle
+of the pool starts a wave that reaches the very shore.</p>
+
+<p>"However, if we act the play for the charity proposed or not, there is a
+matter somewhat connected with it," continued the principal, his face
+clouding for a moment, "that I am obliged to bring to your attention. Of
+course, it is understood that only the pupils who do their work
+satisfactorily to their immediate instructors, will have any share in
+the production of the play.</p>
+
+<p>"This rule, I am sorry to say, will affect certain members of our
+athletic teams who, I find, have been anything but correct in their
+behavior. I shall take this serious matter up in a few days<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span> with the
+culprits in question. At present I will only say that the basket ball
+match set for next Saturday with the team from the Kenyon school, will
+be forfeited. All the members, I understand, of our first basket ball
+team are equally guilty of misbehavior at a time when they were on
+honor.</p>
+
+<p>"I will see the members of the team in my office after the second
+session to-day. You are dismissed to your classes, young ladies and
+gentlemen."</p>
+
+<p>The blow had fallen! Agnes was so amazed and troubled that she failed to
+connect Mr. Marks' observations about the child who was arousing Milton
+to its duty towards the Women's and Children's Hospital, with her own
+little sister, Tess.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>
+<a name="vi" id="vi"></a>CHAPTER VI<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">JUST OUT OF REACH</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ruth Kenway</span>, however, realized that it was Tess who was the instrument
+which was being used in arousing public interest in the Women's and
+Children's Hospital&mdash;and likewise in Mrs. Eland, who had given five
+years of faithful work to the institution.</p>
+
+<p>She was particularly impressed on this very afternoon, when poor Agnes
+was journeying toward Mr. Marks' office with her fellow-culprits of the
+basket ball team, with Tess' preachment of the need of money for the
+hospital. Ruth came home from school to find Mr. Howbridge waiting for
+her in the sitting room with Tess, who had arrived some time before,
+entertaining him.</p>
+
+<p>As the door was open into the hall, Ruth heard the murmur of their
+voices while she was still upstairs at her toilet-table; so when she
+tripped lightly down the broad front stairs it was not eavesdropping if
+she continued to listen to her very earnest little sister and the
+lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"But just supposing Uncle Peter <em>had</em> been 'approached,' as you say, for
+money for that hospital&mdash;and s'pose he knew just how nice Mrs. Eland<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>
+was&mdash;don't you think he would have left them some in his will, Mr.
+Howbridge?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't say I do, my dear&mdash;considering what I know about Mr. Peter
+Stower," said the lawyer, drily.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," sighed Tess, "I do wish he had met my Mrs. Eland! I am sure he
+would have been int'rested in her."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! For she is the very nicest lady you ever saw, Mr. Howbridge.
+And I <em>do</em> think you might let us give some of the money to the hospital
+that Uncle Peter forgot to give&mdash;if he had been reminded, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"That child should enter my profession when she grows up," said Mr.
+Howbridge to Ruth, when Tess had been excused. "She'll split hairs in
+argument even now. What's started her off on this hospital business?"</p>
+
+<p>Ruth told him. She told, too, what Tess did each month with her own pin
+money, and the next allowance day Tess was surprised to find an extra
+half dollar in her envelope.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;ee!" she cried. "Now I <em>can</em> give something to the hospital fund,
+can't I, Ruthie?"</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Agnes, with Eva Larry, Myra Stetson, and others of her
+closest friends (Agnes had a number of bosom chums) waited solemnly in
+Mr. Marks' office. More than the basket ball team was present in anxious
+waiting for the principal's appearance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>
+"Where's Trix Severn?" demanded Eva in a whisper of the other girls.
+"She ought to be in this."</p>
+
+<p>"In what?" demanded another girl, trying to play the part of innocence.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah-yah!" sneered Eva, very inelegantly. "As though you didn't know what
+it is all about!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm sure I don't," snapped this girl. "Mr. Marks sent for me. I
+don't belong to your old basket ball team."</p>
+
+<p>"No. But you were with us on that car last May," said Agnes, sharply,
+"You know what we're all called here for."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"If you weren't told so publicly as we were to come here, you'll find
+that he knows all about your being in it," said Eva.</p>
+
+<p>"And that will amount to the same thing in the end, Mary Breeze,"
+groaned Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know at all what you are talking about," cried Miss Breeze,
+tossing her head, and trying to bolster up her own waning courage.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't know now, you'll never learn, Mary," laughed Myra Stetson.
+"We are all in the same boat."</p>
+
+<p>"You bet we are!" added the slangy Eva.</p>
+
+<p>"Every girl here was on that car that day coming from Fleeting,"
+announced Agnes, after a moment, having counted noses. "You were in the
+crowd, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"What day coming from Fleeting?" snapped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span> the girl, who tried to
+"bluff," as Neale O'Neil would have termed it.</p>
+
+<p>"The time the car broke down," cried another. "Oh, I remember!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you do. So does Mary," Eva said. "We were all in it."</p>
+
+<p>"And, oh, weren't those berries good!" whispered Myra, ecstatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't care!" said Mary Breeze, "you started it, Aggie Kenway."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," admitted Agnes, hopelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"But nobody tied you hand and foot and dragged you into that farmer's
+strawberry patch&mdash;so now, Mary!" cried Eva Larry. "You needn't try to
+creep out of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Say! Trix seems to be creeping out of it," drawled Myra. "Don't you
+s'pose Mr. Marks has heard that she was in the party?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sh!" said Agnes, suddenly. "Here he comes."</p>
+
+<p>The principal came in, stepping in his usual quick, nervous way. He was
+a small, plump man, with rosy cheeks, eyeglasses, and an ever present
+smile which sometimes masked a series of very sharp and biting remarks.
+On this occasion the smile covered but briefly the bitter words he had
+to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Young ladies! Your attention, please! My attention has been called to
+the fact that, on the twenty-third of last May&mdash;a Saturday&mdash;when our
+basket ball team played that of the Fleeting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span> schools, you girls&mdash;all of
+you&mdash;on the way back from the game, were guilty of entering Mr. Robert
+Buckham's field at Ipswitch Curve, and appropriated to your own use, and
+without permission, a quantity&mdash;whether it be small or large&mdash;of
+strawberries growing in that field. The farmer himself furnishes me with
+the list of your names. I have not seen him personally as yet; but as
+Mr. Buckham has taken the pains to trace the culprits after all this
+time has elapsed he must consider the matter serious.</p>
+
+<p>"What particular punishment shall be meted out to you, I have not
+decided. As a general and lasting rebuke, however, I had thought of
+forfeiting all the games the team has already won in the county series,
+and refuse permission to you to play again this year. But by doing that
+the schools of Milton would be punished in total, for the athletic
+standing of all would be lowered.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I have considered a more equitable way of making you young ladies
+pay the penalty of that very unladylike and dishonest proceeding. If the
+Board of Education sanctions a production of <em>The Carnation Countess</em> by
+the pupils of the Milton schools, all you young ladies will be debarred
+from taking any part whatever in the play.</p>
+
+<p>"I see very well," pursued Mr. Marks, "that you who were guilty of
+robbing Mr. Buckham are girls who would be quite sure of securing
+prominent parts in the play. You are debarred. That, at present, is all
+I shall say on this subject. If<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span> the farmer claims damages, that will be
+another matter."</p>
+
+<p>With his rosy face smiling and his eyeglasses sparkling, the principal
+dismissed the woeful party. They filed out of the office, very glum
+indeed. And Mary Breeze was more than a little inclined to blame Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care! I took only a few berries myself," she complained. "And
+we none of us would have thought of going over that fence and raiding
+the strawberry patch if it hadn't been for Agnes."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah-yah!" repeated Eva, with scorn. "What's the use of saying that?
+Aggie may have been the first one over the fence; but we were all right
+after her. She may have a little the quickest mind in this crowd, but
+her limbs are no quicker."</p>
+
+<p>"And how about Trix?" murmured Myra Stetson. "How is it she has escaped
+the deluge?"</p>
+
+<p>That is what Neale O'Neil asked when he met Agnes just before she
+reached the old Corner House.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Aggie, how did you come out?" he asked soberly. "Was Mr. Marks just
+as hard on you as he could be?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so," Agnes replied gravely. "We don't just know yet what he
+means to do. Only in part. But that part is just <em>awful</em>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Was the row about Buckham's berries?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought so. What's he going to do to you? Make you forfeit all the
+games?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span>
+"No. Maybe something worse than that."</p>
+
+<p>"Worse? What is it?" asked Neale, in wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"He says we none of us can act in that play he told about this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" muttered the boy, eyeing Agnes' flushed face and tearful eyes in
+surprise. "Do you care?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neale! I <em>know</em> I can act. I love it. I've always been crazy for
+it. And now, when there's maybe a chance, I am not&mdash;going&mdash;to&mdash;be&mdash;let!"</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness! do you really feel so bad about it, Aggie?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash; Why, my heart will be just <em>broken</em> if I can't act in <em>The
+Carnation Countess</em>," sobbed the Corner House girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, cricky! Don't turn on the sprinkler again, Aggie," begged Neale, in
+a panic.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I just can't help it! To think of there being a play acted in this
+town, and I might be in it!" wailed Agnes. "And now it's just out of my
+reach! It's too mean for anything, that's what it is!"</p>
+
+<p>She threatened to burst into another flood, and Neale tried to head the
+tears off by saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't cry again, Aggie. Oh, don't! If you won't cry I'll try to find
+some way of getting you out of the scrape."</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you can't, Neale O'Neil!"</p>
+
+<p>"We&mdash;ell, I can try."</p>
+
+<p>"And I wouldn't want to get out of it myself unless the other girls
+escaped punishment, too."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a good little sport, Aggie. I always<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span> said so," Neale declared,
+admiringly. "Say, that reminds me!" he added, suddenly. "Were all the
+girls up before Mr. Marks?"</p>
+
+<p>"All who went over to Fleeting that day, do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. All that were in that car that broke down."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;yes&mdash;I think so."</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" grunted Neale, thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"All but one anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo! Who was that?"</p>
+
+<p>"The girl who wasn't in Mr. Marks' office?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Who was missing of that bunch of berry raiders?" and Neale
+grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;Trix," said Agnes, slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah-ha! I smell a mouse!"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that, Neale O'Neil?" cried the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing significant in the fact that our festive Beatrice was not
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Why should there be?" demanded Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"And who do you suppose furnished Mr. Marks with his information and the
+list of you girls' names?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the farmer!"</p>
+
+<p>"Old Buckham?" cried Neale, startled.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Agnes. "Mr. Marks said so."</p>
+
+<p>Neale looked both surprised and doubtful. "Then why didn't Buckham give
+in Trix's name, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know, Neale. No use in blaming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span> her just because she was
+lucky enough to escape."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all right. I'll go to my Lady Beatrice, get down on my
+shin-bones, and beg her pardon, if I wrongfully suspect her," laughed
+Neale. "But, I say, Aggie! did Mr. Buckham come to see Mr. Marks about
+it? Did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I think Mr. Marks said the farmer wrote."</p>
+
+<p>"<em>Wrote?</em>" cried the boy. "Why, I don't believe Bob Buckham <em>can</em> write.
+He's a smart enough old fellow, but he never had any schooling. He told
+me so. He's not a bad sort, either. He must have been awfully mad about
+those strawberries to hold a grudge so long as this. I worked for him a
+while, you know, Aggie."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, so you did, Neale."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I don't believe he is the sort who would make so much trouble for
+a bunch of girls. Somebody must have egged him on," said Neale,
+gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>"There you go again, Neale," groaned Agnes. "Hinting at Beatrice
+Severn."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," grinned Neale, "you want me to help you out of your scrape,
+don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"At nobody else's expense," said Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know what to make of it," grumbled Neale. "It looks fishy to me.
+Mr. Buckham writing Mr. Marks! I'm going to find out about <em>that</em>. Keep
+up your pluck, Aggie. I'll see what can be done," and Neale, with his
+cap on the back of his flaxen head and his hands in his pockets, went
+off whistling.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>
+<a name="vii" id="vii"></a>CHAPTER VII<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE CORE OF THE APPLE</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dot Kenway</span> came home a day or two after this, quite full of her first
+"easy lessons in physiology." It always seemed to Dot that when she
+learned a new fact it was the very first time it had ever been learned
+by anybody.</p>
+
+<p>"Dot is just like a hen," Neale O'Neil said, chuckling. "She gets hold
+of a thing and you'd think nobody ever knew it before she did. She is
+the original discoverer of every fact that gets into her little noddle."</p>
+
+<p>"But how does that make her like a hen?" demanded Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, a hen lays an egg, and then gets so excited about it and makes
+such a racket, that you'd think that was the first egg that had been
+laid since the world began."</p>
+
+<p>"What is all this you learned, Dottie?" demanded Neale, as they all sat
+around the study lamp; for Neale was often at the old Corner House with
+his books in the evening. He and Agnes were in the same grade.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neale! did you know you had a spinal cord?" demanded the smallest
+Corner House girl.</p>
+
+<p>"No! you don't tell me? Where is it?" asked the boy, quite soberly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>
+"Why," explained the literal Dot, "it's a string that runs from the back
+of your head to the bottom of your heels."</p>
+
+<p>At the shout of laughter that welcomed this intelligence, Tess said,
+comfortingly:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mind, Dot. That isn't half as bad as what Sammy Pinkney said to
+Miss Pepperill the other day. She asked us which was the most important
+to keep clean, your face or your teeth, and Sammy shouted: 'Your teeth,
+teacher, 'cause they can rot off and your face can't.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And I guess that awful Miss Pepperpot punished him for that," suggested
+Dot, awed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Sammy is always getting punished," said Tess. "He never <em>does</em>
+manage to say the right thing. And I think Miss Pepperill is kind of
+hard on him. But&mdash;but she's real nice to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why shouldn't she be, honey?" Ruth said. "You're not to be
+compared with that rude boy, I am sure," for Ruth Kenway did not much
+approve of boys, and only tolerated Neale O'Neil because the other
+children liked him so much.</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope not!" agreed Agnes, who did like boys, but did not like
+the aforesaid scapegrace, Sammy Pinkney.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it was the sovereigns of England that makes her nice to me,"
+said Tess, thoughtfully. "I 'spected to have an awfully hard time in
+Miss Pepperill's class; but she has never been real cross with me. And
+what do you s'pose?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>
+"I couldn't guess," Ruth said smilingly.</p>
+
+<p>"To-day she asked me about Mrs. Eland."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Eland?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Tess, nodding. "She asked me if I'd seen Mrs. Eland lately,
+and if she'd found her sister. For you see," explained Tess, "I'd told
+her how poor Mrs. Eland felt so bad about losing her sister when she was
+a little girl and never being able to find her."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I remember," Ruth said.</p>
+
+<p>"But I had to tell Miss Pepperill that I'd only seen her the one
+time&mdash;when she taught me the sovereigns of England. I'd really love to
+see Mrs. Eland once more. Wouldn't you, Dot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, yes!" agreed the smaller girl. "I wonder if she ever got those
+apples?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she did," put in Neale. "Didn't I tell you I took them to the
+hospital myself?"</p>
+
+<p>"We&mdash;ell! But she never told us so&mdash;did she, Dot?" complained Tess.</p>
+
+<p>However, the very next day the children heard from the bag of apples. A
+delightfully suspicious package awaited Tess and Dot at the old Corner
+House after school. It had been delivered by no less a person than Dr.
+Forsyth himself, who stopped his electric runabout in front of the old
+Corner House long enough to run in and set the pasteboard box on the
+sitting room table.</p>
+
+<p>"What forever is that, Doctor?" demanded Mrs. MacCall.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it's something to make these children<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span> sick," declared the
+doctor, gruffly. "They are too disgracefully healthy for anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, thank our stars!" said the housekeeper.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" cried the apparently very savage medical man. "But
+what would become of all us poor doctors if everybody were as healthy as
+this family, I'd like to know?" and he tramped out to his car again in
+much make-believe wrath.</p>
+
+<p>Dot came first from school and was shown the box. It was only about six
+inches square and it had a card tied to it addressed to both her and
+Tess. Dot eyed it with the roundest of round eyes, when she heard who
+had brought it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you open it, child?" demanded Aunt Sarah, who chanced to be
+downstairs. "Bring it here and I'll snip the string for you with my
+scissors."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I couldn't, Aunt Sarah!" Dot declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, I should admire to know?" snapped the old lady. "It's not too
+heavy for you to carry, I should hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, ma'am. But I can't open it till Tess comes," said Dot.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, I should admire to know?" repeated Aunt Sarah, in her jerky
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it wouldn't be fair," said the smallest Corner House girl,
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" snorted the old lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Tess wouldn't do that to me," Dot said, with assurance.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes chanced to get home next. "What<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span> ever do you s'pose is in it,
+Dottums?" she cried. "There's no name on it except yours and Tess'. And
+the doctor brought it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But I know it isn't pills," declared Dot, seriously.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that?" laughed Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"The box is too big," was the prompt reply. "He brings pills in just the
+<em>cunningest</em> little boxes."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe it's charlotte russe," suggested Agnes. "They put them in boxes
+like this at the bakery."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! do you think so?" gasped Dot, scarcely able to contain herself.</p>
+
+<p>"If they are charlotte rushings," chuckled Neale, who had brought home
+Agnes' books for her, "be careful and not be so piggish as the country
+boy who ate the pasteboard containers as well as the cake and cream of
+the charlotte russe. He said he liked them fine, only the crust was
+tough."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy!" ejaculated Agnes. "That's like a boy."</p>
+
+<p>"I <em>do</em> hope Tess comes pretty quick!" murmured Dot. "I&mdash;I'm just about
+going crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>Tess came finally; but at first she was so excited by something that had
+happened in school that she could not listen to Dot's pleading that she
+should "come and look at the box."</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Sammy Pinkney was in difficulties with the teacher again. And
+Tess could not see for once why he should be punished.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure," she said earnestly, "Sammy did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span> his best. And I brought the
+composition he wrote home for you to see, Ruthie. Sammy dropped it out
+of his book and I will give it to him to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>"But Miss Pepperill acted just like she thought Sammy had misbehaved
+himself. She said she hoped she hadn't a 'humorist in embryo' in her
+class. What did she mean by that, Ruthie? What's a humorist in embryo!"</p>
+
+<p>"A sprouting funny man," said Agnes, laughing. "Maybe Sammy Pinkney will
+grow up to write for the funny columns in the newspapers."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us see the paper, Tess," said Ruth. "Maybe that will explain just
+what Miss Pepperill meant."</p>
+
+<p>"And poor Sammy's got to stay after school for a week," said Tess,
+sympathetically, producing a much smudged and wrinkled sheet of
+composition paper.</p>
+
+<p>"<em>Do</em> come and see the box!" wailed Dot.</p>
+
+<p>Tess went with her smaller sister then, leaving Ruth to read aloud for
+the delight of the rest of the family Sammy Pinkney's composition on</p>
+
+<blockquote><h3>"THE DUCK</h3>
+
+<p>"The duck is a low heavyset bird he is a mighty poor singer
+having a coarse voice like crows only worse caused by getting to
+many frogs in his neck. He is parshal to water and aks like hed
+swallowed a toy balloon that keeps him from sinking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span> the best he
+can do is to sink his head straight down but his tail fethers is
+always above water. Duks has only two legs and they is set so
+far back on his running gears by Nachur that they come pretty
+near missin' his body altogether. Some ducks when they get big
+curls on their tails is called drakes and don't have to set or
+hatch but just loaf and go swimming and eat ev'rything in sight
+so if I had to be a duck I'd ruther be a drake. There toes are
+set close together the web skin puts them in a poor way of
+scratching but they have a wide bill for a spade and they walk
+like they was tipsy. They bounce and bump from side to side and
+if you scare them they flap there wings and try to make a pass
+at singing which is pore work. That is all about ducks."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose," cried Agnes in wonder, "that that boy doesn't know any
+better than that composition <em>sounds</em>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently Miss Pepperill thinks he does," laughed Ruth. "But it <em>is</em>
+funny. I wonder what will happen to Sammy Pinkney when he grows up?"</p>
+
+<p>"The question is, what will happen to him before he grows up," chuckled
+Neale. "That kid is a public nuisance. I don't know but that the
+dog-catchers will get him yet."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the two little girls had secured the paper box and opened it.
+Their squeals drew all the others to the sitting room. Inside the
+neatly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span> wrapped box was a round object in silver and gold foil, and when
+this was carefully unwound, a big, splendid golden pippin lay on the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>"Why!" cried Dot, "it's one of our own apples."</p>
+
+<p>"It is surely off our pippin tree," agreed Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Who could have sent it?" Tess surmised. "And Dr. Forsyth brought it."</p>
+
+<p>"Bringing coals to Newcastle," chuckled Neale.</p>
+
+<p>But when Tess took up the apple, it broke in half. It had been cunningly
+cut through and through, and then the core scooped out, and the halves
+of the apple fastened together again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oo-ee!" squealed Dot again.</p>
+
+<p>For in the core of the apple was a wad of paper, and Tess spread this
+out on the table. It was a note and the reading of it delighted the two
+smaller girls immensely:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"My dear Lesser Half of the Corner House Quartette," it began.
+"Your kindness in sending me the nice bag of apples has not been
+overlooked. I wanted to come and see you, and thank you in
+person; but my duties at present will not allow me to do so. We
+are short-handed here at the Women's and Children's Hospital and
+I can not spare the time for even an afternoon call.</p>
+
+<p>"I would, however, dearly love to have you little girls, Theresa
+and Dorothy, both come to call on me, and take tea, some
+afternoon&mdash;the time to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span> set by your elder sister, Miss Ruth.
+Ask her to write to me when you may come&mdash;on your way home from
+school, if you like.</p>
+
+<p>"Hoping I shall have the pleasure of entertaining you soon, I
+am,</p>
+
+<p class="closure1">"Your loving and sincere friend,</p>
+<p class="closure2"><span class="smcap">Marion Eland</span>."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"I think that is just too sweet for anything of her," sighed Tess,
+ecstatically. "To call and take tea with her! Won't that be fine, Dot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fine!" echoed Dot. She bit tentatively into her half of the apple which
+had contained the invitation. "This&mdash;this apple isn't hurt a mite,
+Tess," she added and immediately proceeded to eat it.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>
+<a name="viii" id="viii"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">LYCURGUS BILLET'S EAGLE BAIT</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ruth</span> set the day&mdash;and an early one&mdash;for Tess and Dot to take tea with
+their new friend, Mrs. Eland. She wrote a very nice note in reply to
+that found in the core of the apple, and the little girls looked forward
+with delight to seeing the matron of the Woman's and Children's
+Hospital.</p>
+
+<p>But before the afternoon in question arrived something occurred in which
+all the Corner House girls had a part, and Neale O'Neil as well; and it
+was an adventure not soon to be forgotten by any of them. Incidentally,
+Tom Jonah was in it too.</p>
+
+<p>Ruth tried, on pleasant Saturdays, to invent some game or play that all
+could have a part in. This kept the four sisters together, and it was
+seldom that any Corner House girl found real pleasure away from the
+others. Ruth's only cross was that Agnes would drag Neale O'Neil into
+their good times.</p>
+
+<p>Not that Ruth had anything against the white-haired boy. In spite of the
+fact that Neale was brought up in a circus&mdash;his uncle was Mr. Bill
+Sorber of Twomley &amp; Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie&mdash;he was
+quite the nicest boy the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span> Corner House girls knew. But Ruth did not
+approve of boys at all; and she thought Agnes rude and slangy enough at
+times without having her so much in the company of a real boy like
+Neale.</p>
+
+<p>She suggested a drive into the country for this late September Saturday,
+chestnuts being their main object, there having been a sharp frost. Of
+course Neale had to arrange for the hiring of the livery team, and the
+stableman refused to let them have a spirited span of horses unless
+Neale drove.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, get an automobile then!" exclaimed Agnes. "It's only three
+dollars an hour, with a man to drive, at Acton's garage. Goodness knows
+I'm just <em>crazy</em> to ride in an auto&mdash;one of those big, beautiful
+seven-passenger touring cars. I wish we could have one, Ruthie!"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish we could," said Ruth, for she, too, was automobile hungry like
+the rest of the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Do! <em>do!</em> ask Mr. Howbridge," begged Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for the world," returned Ruth, decidedly. "He'd think we were
+crazy, indeed. There is money enough to educate us, and clothe and feed
+us; but I do not believe that Uncle Peter's estate will stand the drain
+of automobiles&mdash;no indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," sighed Agnes. "We're lucky to have Neale about. You know very
+well if it were not for him the livery man would give us a pair of
+dead-and-alive old things. Mr. Skinner knows Neale is to be trusted with
+any horse in his stable."</p>
+
+<p>This was true enough; but it added Neale O'Neil to the party. When they
+were about to depart<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span> from the old Corner House there was another
+unexpected member added to the company.</p>
+
+<p>Tess and Dot were squeezed in beside Neale on the front seat. Ruth and
+Agnes occupied the back of the carriage with wraps and boxes and baskets
+of eatables. This was to be an all day outing with a picnic dinner in
+the chestnut woods.</p>
+
+<p>"All aboard?" queried Neale, flourishing the whip. "Got everything?
+Haven't left anything good to eat behind, have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you boys!" groaned Ruth. "Always thinking of your stomachs."</p>
+
+<p>"Well! why were stomachs put in front of us, if not to be thought of and
+considered?" Neale demanded. "If not, they might as well have been stuck
+on behind like a knapsack, or like our shoulder-blades.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Mrs. MacCall," proceeded the irrepressible boy. "Plenty of baked
+beans and fishcakes for supper to-night. I see very plainly that these
+girls have brought very little to eat along of a solid character. I
+shall be hungry when we get back."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Tess cried: "Oh, poor Tom Jonah!" And Dot echoed her:
+"Poor Tom Jonah!"</p>
+
+<p>"Look how eager he is!" cried Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>The big dog stood at the gate. Old as he was, the idea of an outing
+pleased him immensely. He was always delighted to go picnicking with the
+Corner House girls; but as the legend on his collar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span> proclaimed, Tom
+Jonah was a gentleman, and nobody had invited him to go on this
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Ruth! let him come!" cried the three younger girls in chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" added Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know," said Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be a long march for him," said Neale, doubtfully. "He'll get
+left behind. The horses are fast."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you are the one to see that he isn't left behind, Neale O'Neil,"
+asserted Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said the boy, meekly, but winking at Uncle Rufus and Mrs.
+MacCall. Neale had wanted the old dog to go all the time, and his remark
+had turned the scale in Tom Jonah's favor.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, boy! you can go, too," Ruth announced as the horses started.</p>
+
+<p>Tom Jonah uttered a joyful bark, circled the carriage and pair two or
+three times in the exuberance of his delight, and then settled down to a
+steady pace under the rear axle. Neale saw to it that the lively ponies
+did not travel too fast for the old dog.</p>
+
+<p>The carriage rattled across Main Street and out High Street. The town
+was soon left behind, Neale following the automobile road along which
+ran the interurban electric tracks to Fleeting and beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!" said Agnes, gloomily. "I know this is the way to Fleeting,
+Neale O'Neil. Wish I'd never been there."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>
+"Has Mr. Marks ever said anything further to you girls about Bob
+Buckham's strawberries?" asked her boy friend.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But you see, we haven't played any more outside games, either. And
+I <em>know</em> they'll give <em>The Carnation Countess</em> this winter and we won't
+any of us be allowed to play in it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to be a bee," announced Dot, seriously, "if they have the
+play. I'll have wings and a buzzer."</p>
+
+<p>"A buzzer?" demanded Tess. "What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, bees buzz, don't they? If they make bees out of us, as teacher
+says they will, we'll have to buzz, won't we? We're learning a buzzing
+song now."</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness! and you'll be provided with a stinger, too, I suppose!"
+exclaimed Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! we shall be tame bees," Dot said. "Not at all wild. The song says
+so.</p>
+
+<div class="poemblock">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="io">"'We are little honey-bees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Honey sweet our disposition.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We appear here now to please,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Making sweets our avocation.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Buzz! buzz! buzz-z-z-z!'<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">That's a verse," concluded Dot.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Pepperill," observed Tess, sadly, "said only yesterday that if we
+were in the play at all we might act the part of imps better than
+anything else. It would come natural to us."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Miss Pepperpot!" laughed Agnes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span> "She must find your class a great
+cross, Tess. How's Sammy standing just now?"</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't done anything to get her very mad since he wrote about the
+duck," Tess said gravely. "But Sadie Goronofsky got a black mark
+yesterday. And Miss Pepperill laughed, too."</p>
+
+<p>"What for?" asked Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, teacher asked why Belle Littleweed hadn't been at school for two
+days and Alfredia Blossom told her she guessed Belle's father was dead.
+He was 'spected to die, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what about Sadie?" asked Agnes, for Tess seemed to have lost the
+thread of her story.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Sadie speaks up and says: 'Teacher, I don't believe Mr. Littleweed
+is dead at all. I see their clothes on the line and they was all
+white&mdash;nightgowns and all.'"</p>
+
+<p>"The idea!" giggled Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what Miss Pepperill said. She asked Sadie if she thought folks
+wore black nightgowns when they went into mourning, and Sadie says: 'Why
+not, teacher? Don't they feel just as bad at night as they do in the
+daytime?' So then Miss Pepperill said Sadie ought not to ask such silly
+questions, and she gave her a black mark. But I saw her laughing behind
+her spectacles!"</p>
+
+<p>"My! but Tess is the observant kid," said Neale, laughing. "She laughed
+behind her spectacles, did she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I know when she laughs, no matter how cross her voice sounds,"
+declared Tess, confidently.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span> "If you look right through her spectacles
+you'll see her eyes jumping. But I guess she's afraid to let us all see
+that she feels pleasant."</p>
+
+<p>"She's afraid to spoil her discipline, I suppose," said Ruth. "But if
+ever I teach school I hope I can govern my scholars by making them love
+me&mdash;not through fear."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course they'll all fall in love with you, Ruthie!" cried Agnes,
+with assurance. "Who wouldn't? But that old Pepperpot is another
+proposition."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps she is a whole lot better than she appears," Ruth said mildly.
+"And I don't think we ought to call her 'Pepperpot.' Tess certainly has
+found her blind side."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, of course! Tess is like you," rejoined Agnes. "She would disarm a
+wild tiger."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! oh!" cried Neale, hearing this remark&mdash;and certainly what Agnes
+said was wilder than any tiger! "How would you go to work to disarm a
+tiger, Aggie? Never knew they had arms."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Smartie!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how smart I am," said Neale. "I was setting here
+thinking&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you were <em>sitting</em>," snapped Agnes. "You're neither a hen nor
+a mason."</p>
+
+<p>"Huh! who said I was?" asked Neale.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," returned the girl, "a hen <em>sets</em> on eggs, and a mason <em>sets</em> the
+stone in a wall, for instance. You <em>sit</em> on that seat, I should hope."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, cricky! Get ap, Dobbin and Dewlap!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span> What do you know about Aggie's
+turning critic all of a sudden?" cried Neale.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas for our learning!" chuckled Ruth. "A hen <em>sets</em> only in colloquial
+language. To a purist she always <em>sits</em>&mdash;according to my English lesson
+of yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>"But you'd better see where you are turning to, young man," she went on,
+briskly. "Isn't yonder the road to Lycurgus Billet's place? He owns the
+chestnut woods."</p>
+
+<p>"We can go that way if you like," admitted Neale. "But I want to come
+around by the Ipswitch Curve on the interurban, either going or coming."</p>
+
+<p>"What for?" asked Ruth, while Agnes cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't Neale! I never want to see that horrid place again."</p>
+
+<p>"I just want to," said Neale to Ruth. "Mr. Bob Buckham lives near there
+and I worked for him once."</p>
+
+<p>Until Neale's uncle, Mr. William Sorber, had undertaken to pay for the
+boy's education, Neale had earned his own living after he had run away
+from the circus.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't, Neale!" begged Agnes, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't we drive back that way?" asked Ruth, surprised at her
+sister's manner and words. Ruth did not know all about Agnes' trouble
+over the raid on the farmer's strawberry patch. "But let's drive direct
+to the chestnut woods now."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span>
+"All right," said Neale, turning the horses. "Go 'lang! We'll have to
+stop at Billet's house and ask permission. He is choice of his woods,
+for there's a lot of nice young timber there and the blight has not
+struck the trees. He's awfully afraid of fire."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that Mr. Billet rather an odd stick?" asked Ruth. "You know, we
+never were up this way but once. We saw him then. He was lying under a
+wall with his gun, watching for a chicken hawk. His wife said he'd been
+there all day, since early in the morning. <em>She</em> was chopping wood to
+heat her water for tea," added Ruth with a sniff.</p>
+
+<p>Neale chuckled. "Lycurgus ought to have been called 'Nimrod,'" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" demanded Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Because he is a mighty hunter. And that is really all he does take any
+interest in. I bet he'd lie out under a stone wall for a week if he
+thought he could get a shot at a snowbird! And he'd shoot it, too, if he
+had half a chance. He never misses, they say."</p>
+
+<p>"Such shiftlessness!" sniffed Ruth again. "And his wife barefooted and
+his children in rags and tatters."</p>
+
+<p>"That girl was a bright-looking girl," Agnes interposed. "You know&mdash;the
+one with the flour-sack waist on. Oh, Neale!" she added, giggling, "you
+could read in faint red marking, 'Somebody's XXXX Flour,' right across
+the small of her back!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span>
+"Poor child," sighed Ruth. "That was Sue&mdash;wasn't that her name? Sue
+Billet."</p>
+
+<p>"A scrawny little one with a tip-tilted nose, and running bare-legged,
+though she must be twelve," said Neale. "I remember her."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child," Ruth said again.</p>
+
+<p>There were other things to arouse the oldest Corner House girl's
+sympathy about the Billet premises when the picnicking party arrived
+there. Two lean hounds first of all charged out from under the house to
+attack Tom Jonah.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" cried Dot. "Stop them! They'll eat poor Tom Jonah up, they are so
+hungry."</p>
+
+<p>Tess, too, was somewhat disturbed, for the hounds seemed as savage as
+bears. Tom Jonah, although slow to wrath, knew well how to acquit
+himself in battle. He snapped once at each of the hounds, and they fled,
+yelping.</p>
+
+<p>"And serves 'em just right!" declared Agnes. "Oh! here comes Mrs.
+Lycurgus."</p>
+
+<p>A slatternly woman in a soiled wrapper, men's shoes on her stockingless
+feet and her black, stringy hair hanging down her back, came from around
+the corner of the ramshackle, tumble-down house.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;ya'as; I reckon so. You ain't folks that'll build fires in our
+woodlot an' leave 'em careless like. Lycurgus, he's gone up that a-way
+hisself. There's a big eagle been seed up there, an' he's a notion he
+might shoot it. Mebbe there's a pair on 'em. He wants ter git it,
+powerful. Sue,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span> she's gone with her pap. But I reckon you know the way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, ma'am," said Neale. Then, after he had driven on a few yards,
+he said to the girls: "Say! wouldn't it be great to catch sight of that
+eagle?"</p>
+
+<p>"An eagle?" repeated Agnes, in doubt. "Do you suppose there really is an
+eagle so near to civilization?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't call Mrs. Lycurgus really civilized?" chuckled Neale. "And
+the Billets and Bob Buckham are the nearest neighbors for some miles to
+his eagleship, in all probability."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it is lonely up here," admitted Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a hilly country. There are plenty of wild spots back on the
+high ground, within a very few miles of this spot, where eagles might
+nest."</p>
+
+<p>"An eagle's eyrie!" said Agnes, musingly. "And maybe eaglets in it."</p>
+
+<p>"Like Mrs. Severn wears on her hat," said Dot, suddenly breaking in.</p>
+
+<p>"What! Eaglets on her hat?" cried Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Eaglets to trim hats with?" chuckled Neale. "That is a new style, for
+fair."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear me," said Ruth, with a sigh. "The child means aigrets. Though
+I am sorry if Mrs. Severn is cruel enough to follow such a fashion.
+That's a different kind of bird, honey."</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, there will not be young eagles at this time of year, I guess,"
+Neale added.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>
+"How would we ever climb up to an eyrie?" Tess asked. "They are in very
+inaccessible places."</p>
+
+<p>"As inac&mdash;accessible," asked Dot, stumbling over the big word, "as Mrs.
+MacCall's highest preserve shelf?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite," laughed Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>The road through which they now drove was really "woodsy." The leaves
+were changing from green to gold, for the sap was receding into the
+boles and roots of the trees. The leaves seemed to be putting on their
+bravest colors as though to flout Jack Frost.</p>
+
+<p>Squirrels darted away, chattering and scolding, as the party advanced.
+These little fellows seemed to suspect that the woods were to be raided
+and some of the nuts, which they considered their own lawful plunder,
+taken away.</p>
+
+<p>The Corner House girls, with their boy friend, did indeed find a goodly
+store of nuts. They camped in a pretty glade, where there was a spring,
+and tethered the horses where they could crop some sweet clover. And
+Neale built a real Gypsy fire, being careful that it should do no
+damage; and three stout stakes were set up over the blaze, a pot hung
+from their apex, and the tea made.</p>
+
+<p>And the chestnuts! how they rained down when Neale climbed up the trees
+and swung himself out upon the branches, shaking them vigorously. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span>
+glossy brown nuts came out of their prickly nests in a hurry and were
+scattered widely on the leaf-carpeted ground.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes they came down in the burrs&mdash;maybe only "peeping" out; and
+getting them wholly out of the burrs was not so pleasant an occupation.</p>
+
+<p>"Why is it," complained Dot sucking her fingers, stung by the prickly
+burrs, "that they put such thistles on these chestnuts? It's worse than
+a rosebush&mdash;or a pincushion. Couldn't the nuts grow just as good without
+such awfully sharp jackets on 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dot," said Tess, to whom the smallest Corner House girl addressed
+this speech. "I suspect the burrs are made prickly for a very good
+reason. You see, the chestnuts are not really ripe until the burrs are
+broken open by the frost. Then the squirrels can get at them easily."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I see <em>that</em>," agreed Dot.</p>
+
+<p>"But don't you see, if the little squirrels&mdash;the baby ones&mdash;could get at
+the chestnuts before they were ripe, they would all get sick, and have
+the stomach-ache&mdash;most likely be like children, boys 'specially, who eat
+green apples? You know how sick Sammy Pinkney was that time he got into
+our yard and stole the green apples."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see," Dot acknowledged. "I s'pose you're right, Tess. But the
+burrs are dreadful. Seems to me they could have found something to put
+'round a chestnut besides just old prickles."</p>
+
+<p>"How'd they do it?" demanded Tess, rather<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span> exasperated at her sister's
+obstinacy. Besides, the "prickles" were stinging her poor fingers, too.
+"How do you suppose they could keep the little squirrels from eating the
+chestnuts green, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"We&mdash;ell," said Dot, thoughtfully, "they might do like our teacher says
+poison ought to be kept. She read us about how dangerous it is to have
+poison around&mdash;and I read some in the book about it, too."</p>
+
+<p>"But chestnuts aren't poison!" cried Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"They must be when they are green," declared the smaller girl,
+confidently, possessing just enough knowledge of her subject to make her
+positive. "Else the squirrels wouldn't have the stomach-ache. And you
+say they <em>do</em>."</p>
+
+<p>"I said they <em>might</em>," denied Tess, hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, poison is a very dang'rous thing," went on Dot, pleased to air
+her knowledge. "It ought to be doctored at once and not allowed to run
+on&mdash;for <em>that's</em> very ser'ous indeed. And we mustn't treat poison rough;
+it's li'ble to run into blood poison."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" gasped Tess, who had not had the benefits of "easy lessons in
+physiology" when she was in Dot's grade, that being a new study.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to keep poison," went on Dot, nodding her dark little head
+vigorously, "in a little room under lock and key in a little bottle and
+the cork in so it can't get out, and hide the key and have a skeleton on
+the bottle and not let nobody go there!" and Dot came out, breathless
+but triumphant,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span> with this complete and efficacious arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>The bigger girls had gathered a great heap of the brown nuts before the
+picnic dinner was served. Neale had done something beside shake down the
+nuts. He had stripped off great pieces of bark from the yellow birch
+trees and cut them into platters and plates on which the food could be
+served very nicely. Neale was so resourceful, indeed, that Ruth had to
+acknowledge that boys really were of some account, after all.</p>
+
+<p>When they sat down, Turk-fashion, around the tablecloth which had been
+spread, the oldest Corner House girl sighed, however: "But mercy! he
+eats his share. Where do you suppose he puts it all, Aggie?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't be unladylike enough to inquire," returned the roguish
+sister, with a toss of her head. "How dreadful you are, Ruth!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a very pleasant picnic. The crisp air was exhilarating; the dry
+leaves rustled every time the wind breathed on them; and the tinkle of
+the spring made pleasant music. Squirrels chattered noisily; jays
+shrieked their alarm; the lazy caw of a crow was heard from a distance.</p>
+
+<p>The tang of balsam was in the air and the fall haze looked blue and
+mysterious at the end of the aisles made by the rows of tall trees. It
+was after dinner that a seemingly well-beaten path attracted them, and
+the whole party, including Tom Jonah, started for a stroll.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>
+The path led them to an opening in the forest where a stake-and-rider
+fence was all that separated them from a great rolling pasture. In the
+distance were the craggy hills, where great boulders cropped out and the
+forest was thin and straggly.</p>
+
+<p>It was a narrow valley that lay before the young explorers. Directly
+opposite was a crag as barren as a bald head.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at the cloud shadow sailing over the field," said Ruth,
+contemplatively.</p>
+
+<p>Her remark might have passed without comment had not the shadow, thus
+mentioned, changed form and darted suddenly to one side.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi!" exclaimed Neale. "That's no cloud shadow."</p>
+
+<p>"Look! look!" squealed Tess. "See the aeroplane!"</p>
+
+<p>A flying machine had been exhibited at Milton only a few weeks before,
+and the aviator had done some fancy flying over the house-roofs of the
+town. Little wonder that Tess thought this must be another aeroplane,
+for the huge bird that swooped earthward cast a shadow quite as large as
+had the aeroplane she had seen.</p>
+
+<p>"The eagle!" exclaimed Neale. "Oh, look! look!"</p>
+
+<p>The whole party&mdash;even Tom Jonah&mdash;was transfixed with wonder as they
+observed a huge bird sail slowly across the valley toward them and
+finally alight upon a bare branch of a tall, dead<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span> pine at the edge of
+the field. There the eagle poised for a few moments, its wings half
+spread, "tip-tilting," as Agnes said, till he had struck the right
+balance. Then he settled more comfortably on his perch, turned his head
+till his harsh beak and evil eye were aimed over his shoulder, steadily
+viewing something in the field below him.</p>
+
+<p>The bird did not see the party of spectators at the boundary fence; but
+they quickly discovered the object which the bird of prey observed.</p>
+
+<p>"There! Oh, look there!" gasped Agnes. "<em>That thing's moving!</em>"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a girl!" murmured Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>"Sue Billet&mdash;as sure as you live," muttered Neale. "There's
+Lycurgus&mdash;over behind the fence&mdash;he's after the eagle!"</p>
+
+<p>"What a dreadful thing!" exclaimed Ruth, aloud. "Is he using his own
+child for bait! That's what he's doing! Oh, Neale! Oh, Agnes! He's sent
+that child out there to attract the eagle's attention," Ruth went on to
+cry. "What a wicked, wicked thing to do!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span>
+<a name="ix" id="ix"></a>CHAPTER IX<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">BOB BUCKHAM TAKES A HAND</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ruth's</span> low cry was involuntary. She did not mean to frighten the little
+Corner House girls; but they saw and understood as well as the older
+spectators. Tess and Dot clung together and Dot began to whimper.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't cry, Dot! Don't cry!" begged Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"That&mdash;that awful aigret!" gasped Dot, getting things mixed again, but
+quite as much frightened as though she were right. "It will bite that
+little girl."</p>
+
+<p>"No. We'll set Tom Jonah on him!" exclaimed Tess, bravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" exclaimed Neale, in a low, tense voice. "Lycurgus is going to
+shoot it."</p>
+
+<p>"Go right on, Sue!" they heard the hunter say to his little daughter, in
+a voice scarcely above a whisper, but very penetrating. "Walk right out
+in that there field. I got my eye on you."</p>
+
+<p>"You keep your eye on that ol' eagle, Pap&mdash;never mind watchin' me," was
+the faint reply of little Sue Billet.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you have no fear," Lycurgus said in his sharp wheeze. "I'm
+a-gwine to shoot that fow-el. He's my meat."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>
+The eagle raised his wings slowly; they quivered and he stretched his
+neck around so that he could glare again at the trembling little girl.
+It was no wonder Sue was frightened, and stumbled, and fell into a bed
+of nettles, and then&mdash;screamed!</p>
+
+<p>"Drat the young 'un!" exclaimed Lycurgus, just as the eagle made an
+awkward spring into the air.</p>
+
+<p>But the bird did not fly away; instead it swooped around in a circle,
+displaying great strength and agility in its motion. It's wings spread
+all of six feet. They beat the air tremendously, and then the bird
+sailed low, aiming directly for the child just climbing out of the bed
+of nettles.</p>
+
+<p>It was plain that Lycurgus had not been quite ready for the eagle's
+swoop. He had to try for the bird, however. The screaming Sue could not
+extricate herself from the dangerous situation in which her father had
+placed her. Lycurgus shouldered his gun and pulled the trigger.</p>
+
+<p>He may have had a reputation for never missing his quarry; but his gun
+missed that time, for sure! Not a feather flew from the great bird. Its
+pinions beat the air so terribly that poor little Sue was thrown to the
+ground once more.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes shrieked. The two smaller girls were awestruck. Neale O'Neil
+fairly groaned. It seemed as though the child must fall a victim to the
+eagle's beak and claws.</p>
+
+<p>Its huge wings, beating the air, drowned most other sounds. Lycurgus
+struggled to slip another shell into his old-fashioned rifle. Somehow
+the mechanism had fouled.</p>
+
+<p class="illuslink"><a name="eagle2" id="eagle2"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 438px;">
+<img src="images/illus2.jpg" width="438" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">At the moment the eagle dropped with spread talons, the
+big dog leaped. <span class="pl"><a href="#eagle">Page 103</a></span></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span>
+"Pap! Pap!" screeched the girl at last. "He's goin' to git me!"</p>
+
+<p>At that shrill and awful cry the man flung away his gun and leaped the
+rail fence into the open field. What he thought he might do with his
+bare hands against the talons and armed beak of the bird of prey, it
+would be impossible to say. But whatever fault might be found with
+Lycurgus Billet, he was no coward.</p>
+
+<p>Bare-handed, hatless, and as white as paper, the man ran toward his
+little girl. The shadow of the swooping eagle covered them both.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was that Tess Kenway awoke from her trance. She shrieked,
+suddenly: "Tom! Tom Jonah! Do, <em>do</em> catch it! Tom Jonah! <em>Sic him,
+boy!</em>"</p>
+
+<p>The growling dog needed no second urging. He flung himself through the
+fence and dashed across the intervening space. <a name="eagle" id="eagle"></a>At the moment the eagle
+dropped with spread talons, the big dog leaped.</p>
+
+<p>Tom Jonah's teeth gained a grip upon the bird's leg. The eagle screamed
+with pain and rage. Its wings beat the air mightily, and it rose several
+feet from the ground, carrying Tom Jonah with it!</p>
+
+<p>Lycurgus leaped in and seized Sue. With her clasped close to his chest
+he ran for the shelter of the woods.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span>
+But the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil, with excited cries,
+followed in the wake of the lumbering eagle. It plowed across the field,
+rising and falling with alternate strokes of its wings. Tom Jonah seemed
+in a very precarious situation, indeed.</p>
+
+<p>The old dog had no idea of letting go his hold, however. When once his
+jaws were clamped upon an enemy, he was there to stay. Tess was wildly
+excited. Dot was crying frankly. Agnes called encouragement to Tom
+Jonah. Ruth and Neale were as anxious as the others for the safety of
+the old dog, but they saved their breath. All ran as hard as they could
+run after the eagle and Tom Jonah.</p>
+
+<p>For, scream and beat his wings as he might, the bird could not dislodge
+the dog. Half the time Tom Jonah was on the ground, and when he felt the
+earth he dragged back and tore at his feathered antagonist with an
+obstinacy remarkable.</p>
+
+<p>The eagle could not thrash Tom Jonah with his wings to any purpose; nor
+could he fix his talons in the dog, or spear him with his beak, while
+they both were in the air. As the huge bird sprang up the dog bounced
+into the air, too; but only for a moment or two at a time. The bird was
+growing weaker.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the eagle changed its tactics, and for a moment the two
+antagonists whirled over and over on the ground. How the feathers flew!
+In some way the bird's talons found the dog's flesh.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span>
+It was then, when reckless Neale was trying to find a stone or club,
+that a hoarse voice was heard shouting:</p>
+
+<p>"Get away! stand back! I'm going to shoot that critter!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" shrieked Tess Kenway, not at all the timid and mild little girl
+she usually was. "Oh! don't you dare shoot Tom Jonah!"</p>
+
+<p>There sounded the heavy explosion of a gun. The eagle screamed no more.
+Its great wings relaxed and it tumbled to the earth. Tom Jonah sprang
+away from the thrashing bird, which died hard. The man who had shot it
+strode in from the other side of the field.</p>
+
+<p>It was not Lycurgus Billet. It was an oldish man, with a big, bushy head
+of hair and whiskers. He carried his smoking gun in the hollow of his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"By cracky! I made a good shot that time, for a fact!" this stranger
+declared.</p>
+
+<p>But he was not a stranger to, at least, one of the picnic party. Neale
+O'Neil cried out: "Oh, Mr. Buckham, that was a fine shot! And just in
+the nick of time."</p>
+
+<p>Agnes almost fell over at this exclamation of her boy friend. She clung
+to Neale's jacket sleeve, whispering:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear me! Let's not speak to him! Come, Neale! let's run. I&mdash;I am
+<em>so</em> ashamed about those strawberries."</p>
+
+<p>"Step on that furderinest wing, young feller,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span> said the big, old man to
+Neale. "He's dead&mdash;jest as dead as though he'd laid there a year. He's
+jest a-kickin' like a old rooster with his head off. Don't <em>know</em> he's
+dead, that's all. Step on that wing; it'll keep him from thrashin'
+hisself to pieces," added the farmer, as Neale O'Neil obeyed him.</p>
+
+<p>The girls looked on in awe. Tom Jonah stood by, panting, his tongue out
+and his plume waving proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a great dog," said Mr. Bob Buckham.</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;&mdash; Why, hullo, son! you used to work for us, didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Buckham," replied Neale.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho, ho!" shouted the bushy-headed old man, spying Lycurgus and Sue
+coming from the edge of the woods. "I beat ye to it that time, Lycurgus.
+And what was little Sissy doing out there where the old eagle could git
+his eye on her? I swow! if it hadn't been for the dog, mebbe the eagle
+would ha' pecked her some&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"The eagle would have carried her off&mdash;the poor little thing," said
+Ruth, indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it would, sir," Neale said.</p>
+
+<p>"And that isn't the worst of it," went on the wrought up Corner House
+girl.</p>
+
+<p>"What ain't the worst of it, miss?" asked the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>"That poor little thing was sent out there by her father to attract the
+eagle."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span>
+"What?" roared Bob Buckham, his great face turning red with anger and
+his deep-set eyes flashing. "You mean to tell me he set little Sissy for
+eagle bait?"</p>
+
+<p>He strode forward to meet Lycurgus Billet, leaving the dead bird behind
+him. The chagrined hunter smiled a sickly smile as big Bob Buckham
+approached.</p>
+
+<p>"The old gun went back on me that time&mdash;she sure did, Bob," Billet said.
+"I would ha' got that critter, else. Hullo! what's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>For the farmer reached out a ham-like hand and seized the wiry Lycurgus
+by the shoulder, and shook him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey! what you doin'?" the smaller man repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I've a mind to shake the liver-lights out'n you, Lycurgus Billet!"
+declared the farmer. "To send little Sissy out to be eagle bait fer ye!
+I&mdash;I&mdash;That's the worst I ever heard of!"</p>
+
+<p>"Say!" sputtered Lycurgus. "What d'ye mean? I 'spected ter shoot the
+critter, didn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"But ye didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Just the same she warn't hurt. Air you, Sue?" demanded the little
+girl's father.</p>
+
+<p>Sue shook her head. She hadn't got over her scare, however. "My!" she
+confessed, "I thought he was a-goin' to grab me&mdash;I sure did! And he had
+sech a wicked eye."</p>
+
+<p>"You hear that?" demanded old Bob Buckham, fiercely, and Lycurgus shrank
+away from the indignant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span> farmer as though he expected to feel the heavy
+hand again&mdash;and to sterner purpose this time.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't no business with a young'un like Sissy&mdash;you ornery pup!"
+growled the old man in the culprit's ear. "I wish she was mine. You
+ain't fitten to own little Sissy."</p>
+
+<p>It was evident that the old farmer thought a good deal of the backwoods'
+child. Lycurgus said no further word. He walked over to the eagle and
+looked down at it.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a whopper!" he observed, smiling in his weak way at the Corner
+House girls and Neale O'Neil.</p>
+
+<p>Ruth only nodded coolly. Agnes turned her back on him, while the little
+girls stared as wonderingly at Lycurgus Billet as they would had he been
+a creature from another world.</p>
+
+<p>Bob Buckham and little Sissy, as he called her, were having a talk at
+one side. Something that shone brightly passed from the farmer's hand
+into the child's grimed palm.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Pap!" said Sue, bruskly. "Let's go home. These folks don't
+want us here."</p>
+
+<p>"Lazy, shiftless, inconsequential critter," growled Bob Buckham, coming
+back to the dead eagle, as Lycurgus and his daughter moved slowly away
+across the field.</p>
+
+<p>But then the old man's face cleared up quickly, though he sighed as he
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"That only goes to show ye! Some folks never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span> have no chick nor child
+and others has got 'em so plentiful that they kin afford ter use 'em for
+eagle bait."</p>
+
+<p>His lips took a humorous twist at the corners, his eyes sparkled, and
+altogether his bewhiskered countenance took on a very pleasant
+expression. The Corner House girls&mdash;at least, Ruth and Tess and
+Dorothy&mdash;began to like the old farmer right away.</p>
+
+<p>"Got to take that critter home," declared Mr. Bob Buckham, as
+enthusiastic as a boy over his good luck. "Don't know how I come to lug
+my old gun along to-day when I started down this way. I never amounted
+to much as a hunter before. Always have left that to fellers like
+Lycurgus."</p>
+
+<p>"It was very fortunate for that poor little Sue that you had your
+rifle," Ruth said warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, ma'am," returned Mr. Buckham. "It was that dog of yourn saved
+little Sissy. But I reckon I saved the dog."</p>
+
+<p>"And we're awfully much obliged to you for <em>that</em>, sir," spoke up Tess.
+"Aren't we, Dot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!" agreed the smallest Corner House girl. "I thought poor Tom
+Jonah was going to be carried right up in the air, and that the aigrets
+would eat him!"</p>
+
+<p>"The <em>what</em> would eat him?" demanded the farmer, paying close attention
+to what the little girls said, but puzzled enough at Dot's "association
+of ideas."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>
+Tess explained. "She means the young eagles. She expects the nest is
+full of hungry little eagles. It would have been dreadful for Tom Jonah
+to have been carried off just like a lamb. I've seen a picture of an
+eagle carrying away a lamb in his claws."</p>
+
+<p>"And many a one I reckon this big critter has stole," agreed the farmer.
+"Right out of my own flock, perhaps. But your dog was too big a load for
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, son," he added, briskly to Neale, "you give me a h'ist with the
+bird. I'm going to take him home across my shoulders. Don't dare leave
+him here for fear some varmint will git him. I'll send the carcass right
+to town and have it stuffed." "Goodness!" murmured the startled Tess.
+"You don't <em>eat</em> eagles, do you, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ho, ho!" laughed the farmer. "No-sir-ree-sir! I mean we'll have the
+skin stuffed. When Mr. Eagle is mounted, you'll see him looking down
+from the top of that old corner cupboard of mine in the sittin'
+room&mdash;you remember it, Neale?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," said Neale, as he helped lift the heavy bird to the farmer's
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you and these young ladies doin' around here to-day, Neale?"
+asked Mr. Buckham.</p>
+
+<p>Neale told him. "Got a team, have you?" said the farmer. "Then drive
+right around to the house. You know the way, boy. I wanter git better
+acquainted with these little gals," and he smiled broadly upon Tess and
+Dot.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>
+Ruth was doubtful. Agnes shook her head behind the old man's back and
+pouted "No!"</p>
+
+<p>"I see that dog's ear is torn," went on Mr. Buckham. "I wanter doctor it
+a bit. These eagle's talons may be pizen as nightshade."</p>
+
+<p>So Ruth politely thanked Mr. Bob Buckham and said they would drive to
+his house. So near was the farmhouse, indeed, that Tess and Dot begged
+to walk with the farmer and so be assured that Tom Jonah should have
+"medical attention" immediately. Of course, the old dog would not leave
+the children to go with the strange man alone.</p>
+
+<p>"We can open the gates, too, for Mr. Buckham," said Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"Run along, then, children," the eldest sister said. "We will soon drive
+over with the chestnuts." Then she added rather sharply, but under her
+breath, to Agnes: "I don't see what your objection is to going to Mr.
+Buckham's house. I think he is a real nice old man."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know he is," wailed her sister. "But you never stole his
+berries!"</p>
+
+<p>"Aggie's conscience is troubling her," chuckled Neale O'Neil. "But don't
+you fret, Aggie. Old Bob Buckham won't know that <em>you</em> were one of the
+raiders last May."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he will. When he knows my name. Didn't he send my name to Mr.
+Marks with the others?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did he?" returned Neale. "I wonder!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+<a name="x" id="x"></a>CHAPTER X<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">SOMETHING ABOUT OLD TIMES</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">By</span> the time Tess and Dot Kenway arrived at the rambling old farmhouse at
+Ipswitch Curve, where Mr. Buckham lived, they were as chatty and chummy
+with the man who had shot the eagle as though he were a life-long
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>Without any doubt Mr. Bob Buckham loved children&mdash;little girls
+especially. And Mrs. Bob Buckham loved them, too.</p>
+
+<p>There was a big-armed, broad-shouldered country girl in the wide, clean
+kitchen into which the children were first ushered. She was the
+maid-of-all-work, and she welcomed Tess and Dot kindly, if she did scold
+Mr. Buckham for tracking up her recently scrubbed floor with his muddy
+boots.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you jest hesh, Posy," he told her, good-naturedly. "You know you
+wouldn't have work enough to keep you interested, if 'twarn't for me.
+Where's marm?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the sittin' room, Mr. Buckham&mdash;and don't you darst to go in there
+without scrapin' your feet. And <em>do</em> put that nasty, great bird down
+outside."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't darst to," said Mr. Buckham. "The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span> dogs'll tear it to pieces. I
+wanter fix this Tom Jonah's ear. He's a brave dog, Posy. If it hadn't
+been for him, I swow! Lycurgus Billet's Sue would have been kerried off
+by this old eagle," and he told the wondering girl about the adventure.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you take these little gals in to marm, while I fix up Tom Jonah,"
+Mr. Buckham urged.</p>
+
+<p>So Tess and Dot were ushered into the sitting room by the big girl,
+Posy. Mrs. Buckham was not likely to be found anywhere but in her chair,
+poor woman, as the children very soon learned. She was a gentle,
+gray-haired, becapped old lady who never left her chair, saving for her
+bed at night. She was a paralytic and could not walk at all; but her
+fingers were busy, and she was fairly surrounded by bright colored
+worsteds and wools, finished pieces of knitting and crocheting, and
+incompleted work of like character.</p>
+
+<p>Out of this hedge of bright-hued fancy-work, Mrs. Buckham smiled upon
+the smaller Corner House girls quite as warmly as did Mr. Buckham
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I do declare! this is a pleasure," she cried, drawing one little girl
+after the other to her to be kissed. "Little flower faces! Aren't they,
+Posy? Wish I had a garden full o' them&mdash;that I do!"</p>
+
+<p>"My mercy, Mrs. Buckham! I'm glad you ain't," laughed the maid. "Not if
+they all favored Mr. Buckham and brought as much mud in on their feet as
+he does."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>
+"Never mind, Posy," cried the very jolly invalid. "<em>I</em> don't track up
+your clean floors&mdash;and that's a blessing, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Dot looked rather askance at the bright-colored afghan that hid the
+crippled legs of the good woman. The legs were so still, and the afghan
+covered them so completely, that to the little girl's mind it seemed as
+though she had no lower limbs at all!</p>
+
+<p>She and Tess, however, were soon quite friendly with the invalid. Posy
+bustled about between kitchen and sitting room, laying a round table in
+the latter room for tea for the expected guests. Mr. Buckham, having
+scraped his boots, came in.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how be ye, Marm?" he asked his wife, kissing her as though he had
+just returned from a long journey.</p>
+
+<p>"Just the same, Bob," she replied, laughing. "I ain't been fur from my
+chair since you was gone."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Buckham chuckled hugely at this old pleasantry between them. They
+both seemed to accept her affliction as though it were a joke, or a
+matter of small importance. Yet Mrs. Buckham had been confined to her
+chair and her bed for twenty years.</p>
+
+<p>Before Ruth and Agnes, with Neale O'Neil, reached the farmhouse, driving
+over from Lycurgus Billet's chestnut woods, Tess and Dot were having a
+most delightful visit. Dot was amusing Mrs. Buckham with her chatter,
+and likewise holding a hank of yarn for the invalid to wind off in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span> a
+ball; while Tess, of course, had got upon her favorite topic of
+conversation, and was telling Mr. Buckham all about the need of the
+Women's and Children's Hospital, and about Mrs. Eland.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, she's such an awfully nice lady&mdash;and so pretty," said Tess,
+warmly. "It would be an awful thing if she had to go away&mdash;and she
+hasn't any place to go. But the hospital's <em>got</em> to have money!"</p>
+
+<p>"Eland&mdash;Eland?" repeated Mr. Bob Buckham, reflectively. "Isn't that name
+sort o' familiar, Marm?" he asked his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"The Aden girl married an Eland," said Mrs. Buckham, quickly. "He died
+soon after and left her a widow. Is it the same? Marion Aden?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Eland's name is Marion," said Tess, confidently. "She signed it to
+a note to us. Didn't she, Dot?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the apple," replied Dot, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"What does the child mean&mdash;'in the apple'?" queried the laughing Mrs.
+Buckham.</p>
+
+<p>"That's how she sent us our invitation to her party," said Dot.</p>
+
+<p>"Only to an afternoon tea, child!" exclaimed Tess, quickly. "That isn't
+a party." Then she explained to Mrs. Buckham about the apples and the
+one that came back with the note inside. Meanwhile the farmer was very
+quiet and thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>"So," finished Tess, breathlessly, "we're going to stop at the hospital
+on our way home from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span> school next Monday afternoon. Aren't we, Dot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye-es," said the smaller girl, this time doubtfully. "If Mrs. MacCall
+finishes my Alice-doll's new cloak. Otherwise she can't go, and of
+course I can't go without her. She hasn't a thing fit to wear, now it's
+come fall."</p>
+
+<p>"You ask Mrs. Eland," broke in Mr. Buckham, "if she happens to be any
+relation to Lemuel Aden."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Bob!" said his wife in an admonitory undertone, "never mind raking
+up dead and gone happenings."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm just curious&mdash;just curious," said the farmer. "Nothing to be
+done now about it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Bob!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," subsided the farmer, "a man can't help thinkin' about money that
+he's lost. And that five hundred dollars was stole from us as sure as
+you're alive to-day, Marm."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," his wife said lightly. "You've earned several five
+hundreds since that happened&mdash;you know you have, Bob Buckham. What's the
+good of worrying?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't worrying," denied the farmer, quickly. "But I do despise a thief.
+I was brought up on the motter:</p>
+
+<div class="poemblock">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="io">"''Tis a sin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To steal a pin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis a greater<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To steal a' <a name="tater" id="tater"></a><ins title="removed closing double quote">'tater!'</ins><br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">Ain't that so, children?" he concluded, chuckling.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span>
+Now, Ruth and Agnes were being ushered into the room by the broadly
+smiling Posy just as Mr. Buckham recited this old jingle. Agnes flushed
+to the roots of her hair, and then paled with alarm. She expected, then
+and there, to be accused with the heinous offence of having picked
+strawberries without permission in Mr. Bob Buckham's field!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! what a pretty girl!" cried the invalid. "Come here, my dear, and
+let me pinch those cheeks. You need not blush so; I'm sure you've been
+told you were pretty before&mdash;and I hope it hasn't spoiled you," and Mrs.
+Buckham laughed heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"I should know you were little Theresa's sister," continued the lady, as
+Agnes tremblingly approached. "She will be just such another when she
+gets to be as old as you, I am sure.</p>
+
+<p>"And of course, this is Ruth," and she welcomed the oldest Corner House
+girl, too. "Four such splendid girls must make their mother's heart
+glad."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope we did make her glad when she was with us," Ruth said quietly.
+"But we have no mother now; and no father."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear!" cried the invalid, in quite a shocked tone. "I had no
+idea&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We miss our mother and our father. Even Dot can remember them both,"
+said Ruth, still calmly. "But it happened so long ago that we do not cry
+about it any more&mdash;do we, girls?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>
+As the oldest sister spoke, the other three seemed to be involuntarily
+drawn to her. Dot took one hand and snuggled it against her soft, dark
+cheek. Tess put both arms about Ruth's neck and warmly kissed her. Agnes
+already had her arm around her elder sister's waist.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said Mrs. Buckham, with sudden appreciation. "The others do not
+miss the lost and gone mother, for a very good reason. I am sure you
+have done your duty, Ruth Kenway."</p>
+
+<p>"I have tried to," Ruth said simply. "And they have all been good
+children, and helped."</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't a doubt of it&mdash;I ain't a doubt of it," repeated Mrs. Buckham,
+briskly.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes was watching the changing expression of the old lady's face,
+wondering if&mdash;as Neale had said&mdash;Mr. Buckham could not write, the
+invalid had sent in the list of girls' names to the principal of the
+Milton High. The old farmer himself might be unlettered; but Mrs.
+Buckham, Agnes was sure, must have had some book education.</p>
+
+<p>Right at the invalid's hand, indeed, were two shelves fastened under the
+window sill, filled with books&mdash;mostly of a religious character. And
+their bindings showed frequent handling.</p>
+
+<p>Posy brought in the steaming tea urn. "Come on now, folks," said Mrs.
+Buckham. "I'm just a honin' for a cup of comfort. That's what I call it.
+Tea is my favorite tipple&mdash;and I expect I'm just as eager for it as a
+poor drunkard is after liquor. Dear me! I never could blame them that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>
+has the habit for drink. I love my cup of comfort too well."</p>
+
+<p>Posy was putting Tess and Dot into their chairs. The farmer awoke from
+his brown study, got up, stretched himself, and, with a smile, wheeled
+his wife's chair to the table.</p>
+
+<p>"There ye be, Marm," he said. "All right?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Bob," she assured him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," the farmer said, turning to the children with a broader smile,
+"you ask your friend, Mrs. Eland, if she's related to Lemuel Aden. Seems
+to me she is his brother Abe's darter. Lem was a sharper; but Abe was a
+right out an' out&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Bob!" interposed his wife. "That's all gone and done for."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so 'tis, Marm. But I can't never forget it. I was a boy and my
+marm was a widder woman. The five hundred dollars was all we had&mdash;every
+cent we had in the world," he added, looking about at the interested
+faces of his visitors.</p>
+
+<p>"Abe Aden was a lawyer, or suthin' like that. He was a dabster at most
+things, includin' horse-tradin'. My father had put all the money he had
+in the world in Abe's hands, in some trade or other. We tried to git it
+back when father was kill't so sudden in the sawmill.</p>
+
+<p>"Just erbout then Abe got inter trouble in a horse-trade. He was a good
+deal of a Gyp&mdash;so 'twas said. He left everything in Lem's hands and
+skedaddled out West. But he didn't leave no five hundred dollars in
+Lem's hands for <em>us</em>&mdash;no,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span> sir!" and the old man shook his head
+ruminatively.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. He likely got away with that five hundred to pay his fare, and
+so escaped jail."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know that, Bob," said his wife, gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I don't know it. But I know that my marm and I suffered all that
+winter because of losin' the five hundred. I was only a boy. I hadn't
+got my growth. She overworked because of that rascal's dishonesty, and
+it broke her down and killed her. I loved my marm," he added simply.</p>
+
+<p>"'Course you did&mdash;'course you did, Bob," said his wife, briskly. Then
+she smiled about at the tableful of young folk, and confessed: "He begun
+callin' <em>me</em> 'marm,' like he did his mother, right away when we was
+married. She'd been dead since he was a little boy, and I considered it
+the sweetest compliment Bob could pay me. I've been 'marm' to him ever
+since."</p>
+
+<p>"You sure have," declared Mr. Buckham, stoutly. "But that ain't bringin'
+my poor old marm back&mdash;nor the five hundred dollars. We never did hear
+direct from Abe Aden; but by and by a leetle gal wandered back here to
+the neighborhood. Said she was Abe's darter. He and her mother was lost
+in a big fire in some Western city; and she'd lost her sister, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child!" sighed the old lady. "You couldn't hold a grudge against
+the child, Bob."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>
+"Who says I done so?" demanded the farmer. "No, sir! I never even seed
+the child more'n once or twice. But I know her name was Marion. And I
+heard her tell her story. The Chicago fire was a nine days' wonder, and
+this fire the gal's parents were lost in, was much similar, I should
+say. She'd seen her father and mother and the house they lived in, all
+swept away together&mdash;in a moment, almost. She and her sister escaped,
+but were separated in the refugees' camp and she couldn't never find the
+other child again. This Marion was old enough to remember about her
+Uncle Lem, and where he used to live; so the Relief Committee sent her
+here&mdash;glad ter git rid of her on sech easy terms, I s'pose. But Lem Aden
+had drapped out o' sight before then, and none of us folks knowed where
+he'd gone to."</p>
+
+<p>"And that little girl was Mrs. Eland?" Ruth ventured to ask, for the
+farmer's remembrances of old times did not interest the little girls.
+Posy was heaping their plates with good things to eat. The picnic dinner
+in the woods had been forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I reckon so," Mr. Buckham said, in answer to Ruth's inquiry. "She
+was kep' to help by some good people around here&mdash;just as we took Posy,
+marm and me. The child drifted away later. She got some schoolin'. I
+guess she went to a hospital and l'arned to be a nurse. Then she married
+a man named Eland, but he was sickly. I dunno as she ever did see her
+Uncle Lem."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>
+<a name="xi" id="xi"></a>CHAPTER XI<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE STRAWBERRY MARK</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Agnes Kenway</span> had never been so uncomfortable in her life as she was
+sitting at that pleasant tea-table, at which the invalid, Mrs. Buckham,
+presided. And for once her usually cheerful tongue was stilled.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with Aggie?" asked Neale O'Neil. "Lost your tongue?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe our pretty one is bashful," suggested Mrs. Buckham, smiling
+upon the next to the oldest Corner House girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if she is, it's the first time," murmured Neale. But he said no
+more. Neale suddenly guessed what was troubling his girl friend, and had
+tact enough to keep his lips closed.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes was just as honest a girl at heart as ever breathed. She did not
+need the reminder of the farmer's old doggerel to keep her from touching
+that which was not hers.</p>
+
+<p>At the time when she had led the raid of the basket ball team and their
+friends upon Mr. Buckham's strawberry patch, she had been inspired by
+mere thoughtlessness and high spirits. The idea that she was
+trespassing&mdash;actually stealing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span>&mdash;never entered her helter-skelter
+thoughts until afterward.</p>
+
+<p>The field was so large, there were so many berries, and she and her
+mates took so few, that it really did not seem like stealing to
+thoughtless Agnes&mdash;no, indeed! It was just a prank.</p>
+
+<p>And now to hear Bob Buckham express his horror of a thief!</p>
+
+<p>"And that's what I am!" thought the bitterly repentant Agnes. "No, not a
+thief <em>now</em>. But I was at the time I took those berries. I am awfully
+sorry that I did such a thing. I&mdash;I wish I could tell him so."</p>
+
+<p>That thought took fast hold upon the girl's mind. Her appreciation of
+the enormity of her offence had not been so great before&mdash;not even when
+Mr. Marks, the principal of the Milton High School, was talking so
+seriously to the girls about their frolic.</p>
+
+<p>Then she had felt mainly the keen disappointment the punishment for her
+wrong-doing had brought. Not to be allowed to take part in the play
+which she felt sure would be enacted by the pupils of the Milton schools
+for the benefit of the Women's and Children's Hospital was a bitter
+disappointment, and that thought filled her mind.</p>
+
+<p>Now she felt a different pang&mdash;far different. Shame for her act, and
+sorrow for the wrong she had done, bore Agnes' spirit down. Little
+wonder that she was all but dumb, and that her flowerlike face was
+overcast.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span>
+Tea was over and Mr. Buckham drew his wife's wheel-chair back to its
+usual place by the window. The light was fading even there, and Ruth
+said that they must start for home.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't run away, sis," said the old farmer. "Marm and me don't have many
+visitors like you; an' we're glad to have ye."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear that Mrs. MacCall will be afraid for us if we remain away much
+after dark," Ruth said cheerfully. She had already explained about Mrs.
+MacCall and Aunt Sarah, and even about Uncle Rufus.</p>
+
+<p>"But we all have had such a nice time," Ruth added. "I know we shall
+only be too glad to come again."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a good word," declared the invalid. "You can't come too often."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Ruth. "If Neale will get the ponies ready&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And while he's doin' so, I'll take a look at that dog's ear again,"
+said Mr. Buckham, cheerfully. "Wouldn't want nothin' bad to happen to
+such a brave dog as Tom Jonah."</p>
+
+<p>"He's layin' out behind my kitchen stove, and he behaves like a
+Christian," Posy declared.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a gentleman, Tom Jonah is," said Tess, proudly. "It says so on his
+collar," and she proceeded to tell the good-natured maid-of-all-work Tom
+Jonah's history&mdash;how he had first come to the old Corner House, and all
+that he had done,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span> and how his old master had once unsuccessfully tried
+to win him back.</p>
+
+<p>"But he wouldn't leave us at all. Would he, Dot?" she concluded.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," said the smallest girl. "Why should he? Aren't we just
+as nice to him as we can be? And he sleeps in the kitchen when it's
+cold, for Mrs. MacCall says he's too old to take his chances out of
+doors these sharp nights."</p>
+
+<p>"That's very thoughtful of your Mrs. MacCall, I do allow," agreed the
+jolly invalid. "And do you suppose she will get your doll's cloak done
+in time for your call on Mrs. Eland?"</p>
+
+<p>"My Alice-doll's cloak? I do hope so," said Dot, with a sigh of anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't you go to call on the lady without her, if the cloak shouldn't
+be done?" asked the farmer's wife, much amused.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! I couldn't do that," said Dot, gravely. "You see, I promised
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Who, Mrs. Eland?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am. My Alice-doll. I told her she should go with us. You see,"
+said the smallest Corner House girl, "she was with us when we made the
+acquaintance of Mrs. Eland&mdash;Tess and me. And my Alice-doll liked her
+just as well as Tess and me. So there you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"I see," agreed Mrs. Buckham, quite seriously. "You couldn't disappoint
+the child."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no indeed!" said Dot. "I wouldn't want<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span> to! You see&mdash;she's not very
+strong. She hasn't been since that time she was buried alive."</p>
+
+<p>"Buried alive!" gasped the lady in horror and surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am. With the dried apples."</p>
+
+<p>"Buried with dried apples?" repeated Mrs. Buckham, her wonder growing.
+"What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was a most awful cat's-triumph," said Dot, shaking her head, and
+very, very solemn, "and it makes my Alice-doll very nervous even to hear
+it talked about. If she were here I wouldn't mention it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What? <em>What</em> did you say, child?" gasped Mrs. Buckham. "About a cat, I
+mean, my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"She means 'catastrophe,'" said Tess, coming to the rescue. "I really
+wish, Dot Kenway, that you wouldn't use words that you can't use!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Buckham's mellow laughter rang out and she hugged the smallest
+Corner House girl close to her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, honey," she said. "If you want to make up a new word, you
+shall&mdash;so there!"</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Agnes had followed the farmer out into the big kitchen. The
+old man sat in a low chair and pulled Tom Jonah tenderly between his
+huge knees, till the dog laid his muzzle in his lap, looking up at the
+man confidingly out of his big, brown eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Buckham had put on a pair of silver-bowed spectacles and had the
+salve-box in his hand. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span> laid the badly torn ear carefully upon his
+knee and began to apply the salve with a gentle, if calloused,
+forefinger.</p>
+
+<p>"This'll take the pizen out, old feller," said the farmer, crooningly.</p>
+
+<p>Tom Jonah whined, but did not move. The application of the salve hurt
+the dog, but he did not pull away from the man's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"He sure <em>is</em> a gentleman, jest as the little gal says," chuckled Bob
+Buckham.</p>
+
+<p>He looked so kindly and humorously up at Agnes standing before him, that
+the troubled Corner House girl almost broke out into weeping. She
+gripped her fingers into her palms until the nails almost cut the tender
+flesh. Her heart swelled and the tears stung her eyelids when she winked
+them back. Agnes was a passionate, stormy-tempered child. This was a
+crisis in her young life. She had always been open and frank, but nobody
+will ever know what it cost her to blurt out her first words to Mr. Bob
+Buckham.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Buckham! do you <em>hate</em> anybody who steals from you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Heh?" he said, startled by her vehemence. "Do I hate 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness me, gal! I hope not. I'm a communin' Christian in our church,
+an' I hope I don't have no hatred in my heart against none o' my
+fellermen. But I hate some things that poor, weak, human critters
+does&mdash;yes, ma'am! 'Specially<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span> some of the ornery things Bob Buckham's
+done."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Buckham! <em>you</em> never stole," blurted out Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Ya-as I have. That's why I hate stealin' so, I reckon," said the
+farmer, slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not, really?" cried Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yep. 'Twas a-many year ago. Marm and me had jest come on this farm. She
+was young an' spry then, God bless her! And it was well she was. Bob
+Buckham wouldn't never have owned the place and stacked up the few
+dollars he has in bank, if it hadn't been for her spryness.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd jest got my first strawberry patch inter bearin'&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Strawberries!" gasped Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Ya-as'm. Them's what I've made most of my money on. I only had a small
+patch. They was fust-class berries&mdash;most on 'em. They packed well, and
+we had ter put 'em into round, covered, quart boxes to ship in them
+days. I got a repertation with the local shipper for havin' A-number-one
+fruit.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal! Marm an' me was mighty hard up. We was dependin' on the <em>re</em>-turns
+from the strawberry crop to pay mortgage, int'rest and taxes. And one
+end of the strawberry patch&mdash;the late end&mdash;had the meachinest lookin'
+berries ye ever seen."</p>
+
+<p>Old Bob chuckled at the remembrance. His gaze sought the firelight
+flashing through the bars of the grate of the big cookstove.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>
+"Wal!" he said. "That was a bad time. We needin' the money so, and the
+berry crop likely to be short of what we figgered. Them little old
+<a name="barries" id="barries"></a><ins title="retained barries">barries</ins> at that last end of the patch began to
+ripen up fast; but I see they wouldn't bring me no price at all&mdash;not if
+the shipper seed 'em.</p>
+
+<p>"'Course, he was buyin' from a score o' farmers ev'ry day. My boxes
+didn't have my name on 'em. They had his'n. He furnished the boxes and
+crates himself.</p>
+
+<p>"The devil tempted me," said Bob Buckham, solemnly, "and I fell for him.
+'Course we had always to 'deacon' the boxes&mdash;we was expected to. The top
+layer of berries had to be packed in careful, hulls down, so's to make a
+pretty showin'.</p>
+
+<p>"But I put a lot of them meachin' little berries at the bottom of each
+box and covered 'em with big, harnsome fruit. They looked like the best
+o' the crop. I knew my man would never question 'em. And it made a
+difference of ten dollars to me on that one load.</p>
+
+<p>"I done it," said the farmer, blowing a big sigh. "I done it with as
+little compunction as I ever done anything in my whole endurin' life."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Buckham! Didn't you think it was wicked?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I did," he said, with a grin, "it didn't spile my appetite. Not
+<em>then</em>. Not that day. I seen the carload shipped and never said a word.
+I went home. I eat my dinner just as hearty as ever and made
+preparations to work the next day's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span> load the same way. Ye see, marm,
+<em>she</em> didn't know a thing about it.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal!" continued the old man, "it come bed-time and we went to bed. I
+was allus a sound sleeper. Minute my head touched the husk piller, that
+minute I begun ter snore. I worked hard and I slept hard.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;funny thing&mdash;I didn't git to sleep. No reason&mdash;'parently. Wasn't
+worried. I was kinder tickled at what I'd done, and the slick way I'd
+done it. I never had cheated before to my knowledge; but I was happy at
+the thought of that extry ten dollars, and the other extry money that
+was ter foller."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;and didn't your conscience trouble you?" asked Agnes, wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nope, not a mite. I was jest as quiet and contented as though they'd
+left a conscience out o' me when I was built," and the old man chuckled
+again, heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"Marm says she believes more folks lay awake at night because of empty
+stomachs than from guilty consciences, an' so she always has a plate of
+crackers by her side o' the bed. Wal! I lay as calm as a spring mornin';
+but after a while I gotter countin' sheep jumpin' through a gap in a
+stone-fence, and had jest about lulled myself ter sleep, when seems ter
+me there was a hand writin' on the wall opposite the foot of our bed. I
+didn't see the hand, mind you; but I seen the writin'. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span> was in good,
+big print-text, too, or I couldn't have read it at all&mdash;for you know I
+never had no schoolin', an' I kin jest barely write my name to this day.</p>
+
+<p>"But that print showed up plain as plain! And it was jest one
+word&mdash;kinder 'luminated on the wall. It was <em>strawberry</em>. That's all,
+jest <em>strawberry</em>. You'd think it would ha' been somethin' like <em>thief</em>
+or <em>cheat</em>. Nope. It was jest <em>strawberry</em>. But I had to lay there all
+night with my eyes propped open, seeing that word on the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"When daylight come it was still there. I seen it when I was dressin'. I
+carried it with me out to the stable. Everywhere I looked against a
+wall, I seed that word. If I hung my head and looked at the ground, it
+was there.</p>
+
+<p>"I knowed if what I'd done about those meachin' little berries was ever
+knowed in the community, like enough I'd never be called by my right
+name any more. They'd call me 'Strawberry Bob.' I knowed it. That was
+goin' to be my punishment fur stealin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Bob!" groaned Agnes, much moved by his earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my belief," said old Bob Buckham, "that we don't hafter wait till
+the hereafter ter git our punishment for wrong-doin' here. I reckon most
+times we git it right here and now.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal! I went erbout all that forenoon seein' <em>strawberry</em> marked up
+everywhere. I snum! it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span> was right acrosst marm's forehead when I looked
+at her&mdash;and there warn't no other mark there in them days, you may be
+sure.</p>
+
+<p>"I started in to pack berries jest the same as I did the day before.
+Then, of a sudden, I says to myself, 'Bob Buckham, you derned thief!
+Stop it! Ten dollars a day won't pay you for bein' called "Strawberry
+Bob"!'</p>
+
+<p>"So I boxed them poor berries separate and I told the shipper what I'd
+done the day before. I told him to take ten dollars off my order. He
+grinned at me.</p>
+
+<p>"'There was a railroad wreck yesterday, Bob, and our car went to pot.
+I'll git full damages from the railroad company.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Not for them berries of mine, Silas,' I told him. He was Silas Wales.
+'You <em>de</em>-duct what my berries cost you in full, and I'll turn back my
+hull order to ye!'</p>
+
+<p>"He hummed and hawed; but he done it. He axed me was I havin' a hard
+time meetin' the int'rest on my mortgage, an' I told him the trewth.
+When the mortgage come due that year he come 'round and offered to let
+me have the money at a cheaper rate than I'd been payin', an' all the
+time I wanted. Ye see, that was a cheap way of gittin' a reperation for
+bein' honest, after all."</p>
+
+<p>"And didn't you see the strawberry mark after that?" sighed Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Nope. Nor they never called me 'Strawberry Bob,' though I've been
+raisin' more berries than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span> most folks in this locality, ever since,"
+said Bob Buckham.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Buckham!" exclaimed Agnes. "I ought to be called 'Strawberry
+Agnes'!"</p>
+
+<p>"Heh? What for?" asked the startled farmer.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I stole berries! I stole them from you! Last May!" gulped the
+girl. "You know when those girls raided your field? I was one of them. I
+was the first one over the fence and picked the first berry. I&mdash;I'm
+awfully sorry; but I really didn't think how wrong it was at the time.
+And I wish I'd come to you and told you before, instead of waiting until
+the principal of our school&mdash;Mr. Marks&mdash;and everybody, knew about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Sho, honey!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham, softly. "Was you one o' them gals?
+I'd no idee. Wal! say no more about it. What you took didn't break me,"
+and he laughed. "And I won't tell nobody," he added, patting Agnes'
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>As Agnes dried her eyes before joining her sisters and Neale O'Neil at
+the door, she thought that it was rather unnecessary for the farmer to
+make that promise. When he had caused the list of girls' names to be
+sent to the school principal, he had assured her punishment.</p>
+
+<p>While Bob Buckham was saying to himself: "Now, that's a leetle gal after
+my own heart. She's a hull sight nicer than that other one. And she's
+truly repentant, too."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span>
+<a name="xii" id="xii"></a>CHAPTER XII<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">TEA WITH MRS. ELAND</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Neale</span> was right. At the supper table at the old Corner House that night
+(the Saturday night supper was always a gala affair) Mrs. MacCall asked,
+anxiously:</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you, boy? Are you sick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Mrs. MacCall. Do I look sick?" responded the white-haired boy,
+startled.</p>
+
+<p>"Must be somethin' the matter with you," said the housekeeper, with
+conviction. "Otherwise you wouldn't stop at only two helpings of beans
+and only four fishcakes. I'll have to speak to Mr. Con Murphy," she
+added grimly. "He'd better see that you have a good course of jalap.
+You're getting puny."</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Rufus chuckled unctiously from the background. "Dat boy," he
+murmured, "ain't sickenin' none. He done et a peck o' chestnuts, I
+reckon, already."</p>
+
+<p>In spite of Neale's "puny" appetite, they had a great chestnut roast
+that evening. Eva Larry and Myra Stetson came in unexpectedly, and the
+Corner House girls had a very hilarious time.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span> Neale was the only boy
+present; but he was rather used, by this time, to playing squire to "a
+whole raft of girls."</p>
+
+<p>"And, oh, girls," cried the news-bearer, Eva, "what do you think? The
+School Board has voted to let us give <em>The Carnation Countess</em>. I heard
+it to-day. It's straight. The parts will be given out this next week.
+And, oh! poor us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Lederer said we would have quite important parts in the play,"
+Ruth said complacently.</p>
+
+<p>"And <em>we</em> can only look on," wailed Myra Stetson, quite as lugubriously
+as Eva.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm going to be a bee&mdash;I'm going to be a bee!" Dot danced around
+the table singing this refrain.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you won't be such a noisy one," Tess said admonishingly. "You're
+worse than a bumblebee, Dot Kenway."</p>
+
+<p>Agnes really felt too bad to say anything for a minute or two. It was
+true she felt better in her heart since she had confessed to Mr. Bob
+Buckham; but the fact that she could not act in the musical play was as
+keen a disappointment as lively, ambitious Agnes Kenway had ever
+suffered.</p>
+
+<p>For once Eva Larry's news was exact. It was announced to all grades of
+the Milton Public Schools on Monday morning that <em>The Carnation
+Countess</em> was to be produced at the Opera House, probably during the
+week preceding Christmas,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span> and all classes were to have an opportunity
+of helping in the benefit performance.</p>
+
+<p>A certain company of professional players, headed by a capable manager
+and musical director, were to take charge of the production, train the
+children when assembled, and arrange the stage setting. Half the
+proceeds of the entertainment were to go to the Milton Women's and
+Children's Hospital&mdash;an institution in which everybody seemed now to be
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that a certain little girl named Tess Kenway, had really set
+the ball of interest in motion, was quite forgotten, save by a few. As
+for the next to the youngest Corner House girl, she never troubled her
+sweet-tempered little self about it. "Oh! I'm so glad!" she sighed, with
+satisfaction. "Now my Mrs. Eland can stay."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that you say, Theresa?" Miss Pepperill's sharp voice demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Tess repeated her expression of gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" ejaculated the red-haired teacher. "So you are still interested
+in Mrs. Eland, are you? Have you seen her again?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to take tea with her this afternoon," said Tess, eagerly.
+"So is my sister, Dot."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know if she has found <em>her</em> sister yet?" asked Miss
+Pepperill, but more to herself than as though she expected a reply. "No!
+of course not."</p>
+
+<p>Tess hurried to meet Dot after school. She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span> found her sister at the
+girls' gate of the primary department, hugging the Alice-doll (of
+course, in a brand new cloak) and listening with wide-eyed interest to
+the small, impish, black-haired boy who was talking earnestly to her.</p>
+
+<p>"And then I shall run away and sail the rollin' billers," he declared.
+"I hope they won't find old Pepperpot after I tie her to her
+chair&mdash;not&mdash;not from Friday afternoon till Monday mornin', when they
+open school again. That's what I hope. And by that time I can sail clean
+around the Cape of Good Hope to the Cannibal Islands, I guess."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh-ee!" gasped Dot. "And suppose the cannibals eat you, Sammy Pinkney?
+What would your mother say?"</p>
+
+<p>"She'd be sorry, I guess," said Sammy, darkly. "And so would my pop. But
+shucks!" he added quickly. "Pirates never get eat by cannibals. They're
+too smart."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all you know about it, Sammy Pinkney!" said Tess, sternly,
+breaking in upon the boasting of the scapegrace, who dearly loved an
+audience. "We met a man this summer that knew all about pirates&mdash;or
+<em>said</em> he did; didn't we, Dot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. The clam-man," the smallest Corner House girl agreed. "And he
+had a wooden leg."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he get it bein' a pirate?" demanded Sammy.</p>
+
+<p>"He got it fighting pirates," Tess said firmly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span> "But the pirates got it
+worse. They got their legs mowed off."</p>
+
+<p>"We-ell. Huh! I guess it would be fun to have a wooden leg, at that,"
+the boy stoutly declared. "Anyway, a feller with a wooden leg wouldn't
+have growin' pains in it; and I have 'em awful when I go to bed nights,
+in <em>my</em> legs."</p>
+
+<p>As the little girls went on to the hospital, Dot suddenly felt some
+hesitancy about going, after all. "You know, Tess, they do such <em>awful</em>
+things to folks in horsepistols!"</p>
+
+<p>"For pity's sake! stop calling it <em>that</em>," begged Tess. "And they don't
+do awful things in hospitals."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes they do; they take off folkses legs and arms and pull their teeth
+and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They don't!" denied Tess, flatly. "Not in this hospital, anyway. Here,
+they cure sick ladies and little children that are lame and sick. Oh!
+it's a be-a-utiful place!"</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?" asked Dot, doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Sadie Goronofsky's cousin was there," Tess said, with confidence.
+"Sadie went to see her&mdash;and she had jelly and oranges and farina
+puddings and all kinds of nice things to eat. Sadie knows, because she
+let her lick the tumblers and dishes. Besides, we're not going to be
+patients there," Tess declared. "We're only calling on Mrs. Eland."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope she has some of that nice farina pudding for tea," sighed Dot.
+"I'm fond of that."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>
+"Don't be a little gobbler, Dot, if she gives us anything good," said
+Tess, with her most elder-sisterly air. "Remember, we promised Ruth to
+be little ladies."</p>
+
+<p>"But goodness!" gasped Dot, "that doesn't mean that we can's eat <em>at
+all</em>, does it? I'm dreadful hungry. I always am after school and you
+know Mrs. MacCall lets us have a bite. If being a <em>lady</em> means going
+<em>hungry</em>, I don't want to be one&mdash;so there, Tess Kenway!"</p>
+
+<p>This frank statement, and Dot's vehemence, might have caused some
+friction between the sisters (for of course Tess felt her importance,
+being the older, and having been particularly charged by Ruth to look
+after her sister) had they not met Neale O'Neil coming from the clothing
+store on High Street. He had a big bundle under his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know what you've got, Neale!" cried Tess. "Those are your new
+clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a good little guesser, Tess Kenway," laughed the boy. "And it's
+a Jim-dandy suit. Ought to be. It cost me eight dollars of my hard
+earned lucre."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" demanded Dot, hearing something new.</p>
+
+<p>"Lucre is wealth. But eight dollars isn't much wealth, is it?" responded
+Neale, and passed on, leaving the two little girls at the steps of the
+main entrance to the hospital.</p>
+
+<p>There was no time now for discussing what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span> Mrs. MacCall called "pros and
+cons," for the hall door was opened and a girl in a blue uniform and
+white cap beckoned the two little visitors up the steps.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the two children Mrs. Eland is expecting, aren't you?" she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," said Tess, politely. "We have a 'pointment with her."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," laughed the nurse. "She's waiting for you in her room.
+And the tea smells good."</p>
+
+<p>"Is&mdash;is there farina pudding?" asked Dot, hesitatingly. "Did you smell
+that, too?"</p>
+
+<p>Tess tugged at the smaller girl's coat and scowled at her reprovingly;
+but the pretty nurse only laughed. "I shouldn't be surprised if it were
+farina pudding, little girl," she said.</p>
+
+<p>And it was! Dot had two plates of it, besides her pretty cup of cambric
+tea. But Tess talked with Mrs. Eland in a really ladylike manner.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place the matron of the hospital was very glad to see the
+two Corner House girls. She did not have on her gray cloak or little
+bonnet with the white ruche. Dot's Alice-doll's new cloak was a
+flattering imitation of the cut and color of the hospital matron's
+outdoor garment.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eland was just as pink-cheeked and pretty as ever indoors; but the
+children saw that her hair was almost white. Whether it was the white of
+age, or of trouble, it would have been hard to say. In either case Mrs.
+Eland had not allowed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span> cause of her whitening hair to spoil her
+temper or cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>That her natural expression of countenance was sad, one must allow; but
+when she talked with her little visitors, and entertained them, her
+sprightliness chased the troubled lines from the lady's face.</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;and have you found your sister yet, Mrs. Eland?" Tess asked
+hesitatingly in the midst of the visit. "I&mdash;I wouldn't ask," she
+hastened to say, "but Miss Pepperill wanted to know. She asked twice."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Pepperill?" asked the matron, somewhat puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am. Don't you 'member? She's my teacher that wanted me to learn
+the sovereigns of England."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course! I had forgotten," admitted Mrs. Eland. "Miss
+Pepperill."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And she's much int'rested in you," said Tess, seriously. "Of
+course, everybody is. They are going to make a play, and we're going to
+be in it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to be a bee," said Dot, in a muffled voice.</p>
+
+<p>"And it's going to be played for money so's you can stay here in the
+hospital and be matron," went on Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, my dear! I know about that," said Mrs. Eland, with a very
+sweet smile. "And I know who to thank for it, too."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>
+"Do you?" returned Tess, quite unconscious of the matron's meaning.
+"Well! you see, Miss Pepperill's interested, too. She only asked me for
+the second time to-day if I'd seen you again and if you had found your
+sister."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, my dear. I never can hope to find her now," said Mrs. Eland,
+shaking her head.</p>
+
+<p>"She was lost in a fire," said Dot, suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes! how did you know?" queried the lady, in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"The man that shot the eagle said so," Dot replied. "And he wanted to
+know if you were much related to Lem&mdash;Lemon&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<em>Lem-u-el!</em>" almost shrieked Tess. "Not Lemon, child. Lemuel Aden."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!" agreed the smaller girl, quite calmly. "That's just as though
+I said Salmon for Samuel&mdash;like Sammy Pinkney. Well! It isn't such a
+great difference, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not, my dear," laughed Mrs. Eland. "And from what people tell
+me, my Uncle Lemuel must have been a good deal like a lemon."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he was your uncle?" asked Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;and was he real puckrative?" queried Dot. "For that's what Aunt
+Sarah says a lemon is."</p>
+
+<p>"He was a pretty sour man, I guess," said Mrs. Eland, shaking her head.
+"I came East when I was a little girl, looking for him. That was after
+my dear father and mother died and they had taken my sister away from
+me," she added.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span> "But what about the man that shot the eagle? Who was
+he?"</p>
+
+<p>Tess told her about their adventures of the previous Saturday in the
+chestnut woods and the visit to the farmhouse afterward. Dot added:</p>
+
+<p>"And that eagle man don't like your Uncle Lem-u-el, either."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" asked Mrs. Eland, quickly, and flushing a little.</p>
+
+<p>Before Tess could stop the little chatterbox&mdash;if she had thought to&mdash;Dot
+replied: "'Cause he says your uncle's brother stole. He told us so. So
+he did, Tess Kenway&mdash;now, didn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't say such things," Tess admonished her.</p>
+
+<p>But the mischief was done. The matron lost all her pretty color, and her
+lips looked blue and her face drawn.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you suppose he meant by that?" she asked slowly, and almost
+whispering the question. "That my Uncle Lem's brother was a thief? Why,
+Uncle Lem only had one brother."</p>
+
+<p>"He was the one," Dot said, in a most matter-of-fact tone. "It was five
+hundred dollars. And the eagle man said he and his mother suffered for
+that money and she died&mdash;his mother, you know&mdash;'cause she had to work so
+hard when it was gone. Didn't she, Tess?"</p>
+
+<p>The conversation had got beyond Tess Kenway's control. She felt, small
+as she was, that something wrong had been said. By the look on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span> Mrs.
+Eland's pale face the kind-hearted child knew that she was hurt and
+confused&mdash;and Tess was the tenderest hearted child in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mrs. Eland!" she crooned, coming close to the lady who sat before
+her little stove, with her face turned aside that the children should
+not see the tears gathering in her eyes. "Oh, Mrs. Eland! I guess Mr.
+Buckham didn't mean that. Of course, none of <em>your</em> folks could be
+thieves&mdash;of course not!"</p>
+
+<p>In a little while the matron asked the children a few more questions,
+including Mr. Buckham's full name, and how he was to be reached. She had
+not been in the neighborhood of Ipswitch Curve since she had first come
+from the West&mdash;a newly made orphan and with the loss of her little
+sister a fresh wound in her poor heart. So she had forgotten the
+strawberry farmer, and most of the other people in the old neighborhood
+where her father had lived before going West.</p>
+
+<p>Dot Kenway was quite unconscious of having involuntarily inflicted a
+wound in Mrs. Eland's mind and heart that she was doomed not to recover
+from for long weeks. As the sisters bade the matron good-bye, and
+started for the old Corner House, just as dusk was falling, Tess felt
+that her friend, Mrs. Eland, was really much sadder than she had been
+when they had begun their call.</p>
+
+<p>Tess, however, could not understand the reason for this.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span>
+<a name="xiii" id="xiii"></a>CHAPTER XIII<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">NEALE SUFFERS A SHORTENING PROCESS</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Naturally</span>, Neale O'Neil stopped at the old Corner House on his way home
+with his new suit of clothes, to display them to Agnes and the others.
+In spite of Ruth's pronounced distaste for boys, she could not help
+having a secret interest in Neale O'Neil, and Agnes and Mrs. MacCall
+were not the only inmates of the Stower mansion that wanted to see the
+new suit on the boy, to be sure, before he appeared at church in it the
+next Sunday, that it fitted him properly.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" exclaimed the housekeeper, the moment Neale came back from the
+bathroom where he had made the change, and she saw how the gray suit
+looked. "I never knew that Merriefield, the clothier, to sell a suit but
+what either the coat was too big, the vest too long, or the pants out o'
+kilter in some way. Look at them pants!" she added, almost tragically.</p>
+
+<p>"Wha&mdash;what's the matter with them?" queried Neale, somewhat excited, and
+trying to see behind him. He was quite an acrobat, but he could not look
+down his spinal column. "Are they torn?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>
+"Tore? No! Only tore off a mile too long," snorted Mrs. MacCall.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare, Neale," chuckled Agnes, "they are awfully long. They drag at
+the heel."</p>
+
+<p>"And I've got 'em pulled up now till I feel as though I was going to be
+cut in two," complained the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Made for a man&mdash;made for a man," sniffed Aunt Sarah, who chanced to be
+in the sitting room. She did not often take any interest in Neale
+O'Neil&mdash;or appear to, at least. But she eyed the too long trousers
+malevolently. "Ought to be cut off two inches."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; a good two inches," agreed Mrs. MacCall.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the pants here, Neale, and some of us will get time to shorten
+them for you before next Sunday. You won't want to wear them before
+then, will you?" said Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," returned Neale. "I'm not going to parade these to school,
+first off&mdash;just as Agnes does every new hair-ribbon she buys."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Smartie. Hair-ribbons aren't like suits of clothes, I
+should hope."</p>
+
+<p>"If they were," chuckled the boy, "I s'pose you'd have a pair of my
+trousers tied on your pigtail and hanging down your back."</p>
+
+<p>For that she chased him out of the house and they had a game of romps
+down under the grape-arbor and around the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me!" sighed Ruth, "Neale makes Aggie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span> so tomboyish. I don't know
+what to do about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Sho, honey!" observed the housekeeper. "What do you care as long as
+she's healthy and pretty and happy? Our Aggie is one of the best."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she is," rejoined the oldest Corner House girl. "But she's
+getting so big&mdash;and is so boisterous. And see what trouble she has got
+into about that frolic last spring. She can't play in this show that the
+others are going to act in."</p>
+
+<p>"That's too bad," said Mrs. MacCall, threading her needle. "If ever
+there was a girl cut out to be a mimic and actress, it's Aggie Kenway."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't for pity's sake tell her that!" cried Ruth, in alarm. "It will
+just about make her crazy, if you do. She is being punished for raiding
+that farmer's field&mdash;and it's right she should be punished&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Mean man!" snapped Aunt Sarah, suddenly. "Those gals couldn't have eat
+many of his old berries."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I don't think Mr. Bob Buckham is mean," Ruth observed slowly,
+surprised to see Aunt Sarah take up cudgels for Agnes, whom the old lady
+often called "hare-brained." "And he is not punishing the girls of the
+basket ball team. Mr. Marks is doing that."</p>
+
+<p>"How did Mr. Marks know about it?" put in Aunt Sarah again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span>
+"Well, we suppose Mr. Buckham told him. So Mr. Marks said, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Mean man, then!" reiterated the old lady.</p>
+
+<p>That was her only comment upon the matter. But once having expressed her
+opinion of the strawberry man, nothing on earth could have changed Aunt
+Sarah's mind toward him.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes herself could not hold any hard feeling toward Mr. Buckham. Not
+after listening to his story, and being forgiven so frankly and freely
+her part in the raid on the strawberry patch.</p>
+
+<p>However much her sisters and the rest of the family felt for Agnes, the
+latter suffered more keenly as the week went by. The teachers in each
+grade took half an hour a day to read the synopsis of <em>The Carnation
+Countess</em> to their pupils and to explain the part such pupils would have
+in the production. <a name="in" id="in"></a><ins title="removed in from between">Also the</ins> training of those who had
+speeches or songs began. Of course, the preliminary training for the
+dance steps was left to the physical culture teachers on Friday
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes and her fellow culprits had to sit and listen to it all, knowing
+full well that they could have no part in the performance.</p>
+
+<p>"But just think!" Myra Stetson said, as they came out of school on
+Thursday. "Just think! Trix Severn is going to be Innocent Delight, that
+awfully nice girl who appears in every act. Think of it! She showed me
+the part Professor Ware gave her. Think of it&mdash;<em>Innocent Delight</em>!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span>
+"Oh! oh! oh!" gasped the chorus of unhappy basket ball players.</p>
+
+<p>"And she is every bit as guilty as we are," added Eva Larry.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" commanded Agnes. "Somebody'll hear you."</p>
+
+<p>"What if?"</p>
+
+<p>"We don't want Trix to say that we dragged her into our trouble when she
+was lucky enough to escape."</p>
+
+<p>"And I'd just like to know how she did escape," murmured Myra.</p>
+
+<p>"I think Mr. Marks is just as mean!" exclaimed Mary Breeze. "Miss
+Lederer said I had a good chance to be Bright Thoughts&mdash;she would have
+picked me for that part. And now I can't be in the play at all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness, no! We can't even 'carry out the dead,' as my brother calls
+it," said another girl. "The door is entirely shut to us."</p>
+
+<p>"We all ought to have had a bright thought and have stayed out of that
+farmer's field," growled Eva. "Mean old hunks!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" cried Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"That Buckham man."</p>
+
+<p>"No, he isn't!" said the Corner House girl, stoutly. "He's a fine old
+man. I've talked with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Agnes!" cried Myra. "Did you see him and try to beg off for us?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I didn't do that. I didn't see that that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span> would help us. Mr. Marks
+has punished us, not Mr. Bob Buckham."</p>
+
+<p>"I bet she did," said Mary Breeze, unkindly. "At least, I bet she tried
+to beg off for herself."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mary, you know you don't believe any such thing," Eva said. "We
+know what kind of girl Agnes Kenway is. She would not do such a thing.
+If she asked, it would be for us all."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Agnes, shortly. "I did not do that. I just told Mr. Buckham
+how sorry I was for taking the berries."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! What did he say, Aggie?" asked another girl.</p>
+
+<p>"He forgave me. He was real nice about it," Agnes confessed.</p>
+
+<p>"But he told on us. Otherwise we wouldn't be in this pickle," Mary
+Breeze said. "I don't call that nice."</p>
+
+<p>Agnes had it on her tongue to say that she did not believe Mr. Bob
+Buckham had sent the list of the culprit's names to Mr. Marks. Although
+she had said nothing more to Neale O'Neil about it, she knew that the
+boy was confident that the list of girls' names reached the principal of
+the Milton High through some other channel than that of the farmer.
+Agnes herself was assured that Mr. Buckham could not write. Nor did he
+and his wife seem like people who would do such a thing. Besides, how
+had the farmer obtained the girls' names, in the first place?</p>
+
+<p>Like Neale, too, Agnes had a feeling that Trix<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span> Severn somehow held the
+key to the mystery. But the Corner House girl would not say so aloud.
+Indeed, she had refused to acknowledge this belief to Neale.</p>
+
+<p>So now she kept still and allowed the other girls to do the talking and
+surmising.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, say what you may," Myra Stetson said at last. "Trix is one lucky
+girl. But she'll make a fine Innocent Delight&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think!" finished Eva. "Aggie is the one for that. A blonde. Who
+ever but Professor Ware would think of giving such a part to a dark
+girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's not criticise," Agnes said, with a sigh. "We can't be in it, but
+we mustn't knock."</p>
+
+<p>"Right-oh!" said Myra, the cheery one. "We can go to the show and root
+for the others."</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" gasped Eva, "I'd like to see myself applaud Trix Severn as
+Innocent Delight! I&mdash;guess&mdash;not!"</p>
+
+<p>Although Ruth Kenway had not been selected for one of the speaking
+parts, she was quite as excited, nevertheless, as those who had been
+thus chosen. To keep one's mind upon lessons and <em>The Carnation
+Countess</em> at the same time, was difficult even for the steady-minded
+Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>Dot went "buzzing" about the house like a veritable bee, singing the
+song that was being taught her and her mates. Tess' class were to be
+butterflies and hummingbirds. And&mdash;actually!&mdash;Tess had been given a part
+to speak.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span>
+It was not very long, but it was of some importance; and her name,
+Theresa Kenway, would appear on the programme, as Swiftwing.</p>
+
+<p>It really was a mystery how Tess came to be chosen for the part. She was
+such a quiet, unobtrusive child that she never would be noticed in a
+crowd of other children of her age. But when Professor Ware, the musical
+director, came around to Miss Pepperill's class to "look the talent
+over," as he expressed it, he chose Tess without the least hesitancy for
+Swiftwing, the hummingbird.</p>
+
+<p>"You lucky dear!" Agnes said. "Well! at least the Kenways will be
+represented on the programme, if I can't do anything myself."</p>
+
+<p>Others, besides her immediate girl friends, said abroad that Agnes
+Kenway should be Innocent Delight. She was just fitted for the part.
+Miss Shipman, Agnes' old teacher, joined Miss Lederer in petitioning
+that the second oldest Corner House girl be given the part instead of
+Trix Severn. Trix, as a very pronounced brunette, would much better be
+given a part like Tom-o'-Dreams or Starlight.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Marks was obdurate. None of the girls who had entered into the
+reprehensible prank on the way back from the basket ball game at
+Fleeting could have any part in the performance of <em>The Carnation
+Countess</em>.</p>
+
+<p>"The farmer wrote me of their stealing the berries in such a strain that
+I fear he may take legal action against the parents of the foolish
+girls. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span> would be a lasting disgrace for any of the names of these
+girls to appear on our programme and in court proceedings at the same
+time," added the principal, though smiling at this conceit. "I do not
+see how I can change my ruling."</p>
+
+<p>But Agnes could not understand Mr. Bob Buckham. His letter to Mr. Marks
+must have been really vindictive; yet he did not seem to be at all the
+sort of person who would be so stern and uncompromising.</p>
+
+<p>Just what Neale had done toward getting his girl chum out of "the mess,"
+as he called it, Agnes did not know. At this time Neale suffered
+something which quite took up his attention.</p>
+
+<p>Those trousers that were too long!</p>
+
+<p>Saturday of this very busy week came, and Agnes, in dusting the
+sitting-room, found Neale's new gray trousers, neatly folded, on Ruth's
+sewing-table.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Ruthie!" she said. "You never fixed these pants."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to," her sister replied, and sat right down, there and then,
+carefully ripped the hem at the bottom of each trouser-leg, cut off two
+inches and stitched a new hem very carefully, putting back the
+stiffening and sewing on the "heel-strap" in a very workmanlike manner.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes ran to the kitchen for an iron and pressed the bottom of the
+trouser-legs to conform with the tailor's creases. "There! that's done,"
+she said, "and done right."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span>
+It most certainly was done, whether right or not, the sequel was to
+show. After supper Neale started for home and Agnes gave him the new
+trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you'll want to wear that fancy suit of yours to church
+to-morrow morning," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Bet you!" he replied cheerfully. "Did you cut 'em down?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ruthie did," said Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Good for her! Tell her 'Thanks'!"</p>
+
+<p>As he went through the front hall Aunt Sarah put her head over the
+balustrade and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you get them pants, boy?"</p>
+
+<p>She never by any possibility called Neale by his right name, and her
+voice now was just as sharp as ever.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am&mdash;thank you," Neale said politely.</p>
+
+<p>In the kitchen Mrs. MacCall said, with a smile: "The pants all right,
+Neale?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure they are," he declared, as he went out. Then he thought: "Dear me!
+seems as though everybody has a lot of interest in my new clothes."</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, early, when he put the suit on to display it to the old
+cobbler with whom Neale lived, the boy experienced a sudden and
+surprising interest in the trousers himself.</p>
+
+<p>The Corner House girls were at breakfast when, with a great clatter,
+Neale rushed in at the back door, through the kitchen, and into the
+dining room. He had on his new jacket and vest, but around his waist was
+tied a voluminous kitchen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span> apron that Mr. Con Murphy wore when he
+cooked, which covered Neale to his insteps.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! what is the matter, Neale?" asked Ruth, with some vexation.</p>
+
+<p>"Matter? Matter enough!" cried the white-haired boy, very red in the
+face. "<em>Look what you did to my pants!</em>"</p>
+
+<p>He lifted the apron and displayed a wealth of blue yarn sock above his
+shoe-tops, and hose supporters as well.</p>
+
+<p>"For the good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated Aunt Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>"I <em>never</em>&mdash;in all my life!" cried Mrs. MacCall.</p>
+
+<p>"Ma soul an' body!" chuckled Uncle Rufus from the background. "Somebody
+done sawed off dat boy's pants too short, for suah!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear suz!" added the housekeeper. "I'm sure I never did <em>that</em>."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't tell me 'twas <em>me</em> done it," snapped Aunt Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neale!" wailed Ruth. "I didn't cut off but two inches."</p>
+
+<p>"<em>You</em>, Niece Ruth?" exclaimed Aunt Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what <em>I</em> done."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh!" sharply cried Mrs. MacCall. "I cut 'em off, too!"</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Rufus almost dropped the dish of ham and eggs he was serving.
+Agnes shouted:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my heart alive! <em>Six inches off the bottom of those trousers!</em> You
+have gone back into short pants, Neale O'Neil, that's sure!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span>
+<a name="xiv" id="xiv"></a>CHAPTER XIV<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE FIRST REHEARSAL</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">So</span> Neale O'Neil did not parade his new grey suit to church on that
+particular Sunday. Before the next came around Ruth had purchased
+another pair of trousers that fitted the white-haired boy, and the much
+cut-down pair was saved for patches.</p>
+
+<p>Something quite as interesting to him and the Corner House girls as a
+new suit, appeared at the First Church, however, which they all
+attended. Mr. Bob Buckham was at the morning service.</p>
+
+<p>The girls and Neale did not see the farmer till after the sermon. Then
+it was Agnes who first spied him, and she hurried back to where the old
+man was shaking hands with two or three of the elderly members of the
+congregation, who knew him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Buckham in his Sunday clothes looked no more staid and respectable
+than he did at home; and his eyes twinkled as merrily and his smile was
+just as kind as on week-days.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo! here's one of my smart little friends," he exclaimed, welcoming
+Agnes. "How's your mind now, miss? Quite calm <em>and</em> contented?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span>
+"I feel better than I did," confessed Agnes. "But I'm paying for my
+wrong-doing just the same. You know, Mr. Buckham, you said you thought
+we almost always got punished for our sins right here and now. We are.
+We girls who stole from you, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Sho'! didn't I tell you to say no more about that?" cried the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>"But Mr. Marks, our principal, is punishing us," Agnes told him.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham, innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"Eva and Myra and Mary and a lot of them, as well as myself, are
+forbidden to take any part in the play that is going to be given for the
+benefit of the Women's and Children's Hospital."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal, that's what I call rough!" the farmer admitted. "To my mind the
+berries weren't worth all this catouse over 'em. No, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"But what did you <em>suppose</em> he would do to us?" asked the Corner House
+girl, desperately.</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Marks."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;I dunno," said the puzzled farmer. "It re'lly is too bad he
+l'arned about you gals playin' that prank, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Agnes stared at him. She could not understand this at all. And
+immediately Mr. Buckham went on to say: "The Women's and Children's
+Hospital, eh? That's where your friend, Mrs. Eland, is matron, isn't
+it?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span>
+"She is Tess' and Dot's friend," explained Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal! I come inter town pertic'lar to-day to see her. I got kind of a
+funny letter from her this week."</p>
+
+<p>"From Mrs. Eland?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yep. Marm said I'd better answer it in person. Word o' mouth ain't so
+ha'sh as a letter, ye know. And I ain't no writer myself."</p>
+
+<p>Had he said this to Ruth, for instance, she would doubtless have been
+interested enough to have asked some questions, and so discovered what
+trouble Dot's busy tongue had started. Agnes, however, only listened
+perfunctorily to the farmer's speech. Her mind was too perplexed about
+the letter which had reached Mr. Marks purporting to come from Mr.
+Buckham, in which he had complained of the girls stealing his berries.
+Mr. Buckham spoke as though he had no knowledge of the information
+lodged with the principal of the high school.</p>
+
+<p>Now Tess and Dot saw "the eagle man" and they came clamoring about him.
+Ruth came, too; and Neale followed. The boy had had no opportunity of
+talking to the farmer alone the day of the chestnutting party. Now he
+invited Mr. Buckham to go home with him to Mr. Con Murphy's for dinner,
+and the old farmer accepted.</p>
+
+<p>"That pretty, leetle gal's mighty bothered about her and her friends
+playin' hob in my berry patch last May," Mr. Bob Buckham said, as he
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span> Neale crossed the Parade Ground. "How'd that school teacher l'arn
+of it? Too bad! I reckon the gals didn't mean no harm."</p>
+
+<p>"Why," cried Neale, flushing, and looking at the old man curiously.
+"Somebody told on them."</p>
+
+<p>"Told the teacher, you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Wrote a letter to Mr. Marks giving all their names."</p>
+
+<p>"Sho! ain't that a shame?" said Mr. Buckham, calm as a summer sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty mean I think myself, sir," Neale said warmly. "It stirred Mr.
+Marks all up. He says he thinks you may intend making the girls pay for
+the berries they took."</p>
+
+<p>"<em>What's that?</em>" demanded the farmer, stopping stock still on the walk.</p>
+
+<p>"He says your letter sounds as though you would do just that."</p>
+
+<p>"<em>My</em> letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Marks says the letter came from you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Neale, you know I ain't no writest," gasped the farmer. "It ain't
+possible he thinks I'd write him about a peck or two of strawberries?
+They was some of my best and earliest ones, and I was mad enough about
+it at the time; but, shucks! old Bob Buckham ain't mean enough to harry
+a pack of gals about sech a thing, I should hope!"</p>
+
+<p>Neale stared at him with a look of satisfaction on his face.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>
+"Don't mean to tell me that Pretty thinks that of me, do ye?" added the
+old gentleman, much worried.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. She thinks you sent the letter."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal! she treats me mighty nice, then. I'd des-arve snubbin'&mdash;I most
+surely would&mdash;at her han's if she thinks I am that mean. She's a mighty
+nice gal."</p>
+
+<p>"She's the best little sport ever, Aggie is!" declared the boy,
+enthusiastically. Then he added: "I knew it wasn't like you to do such a
+thing, and it's puzzled me. But somebody wrote in your name and listed
+all the girls that raided your berry patch&mdash;<em>but one</em>."</p>
+
+<p>"All but one gal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. One girl's name was left off the list," Neale said
+confidently.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear me! Dear, dear me!" murmured the old farmer, pursing his lips
+and eyeing Neale very gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"And that particular girl is going to have one of the best parts in the
+show they are giving for the hospital benefit," Neale pursued.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so?" said old Bob Buckham, still seriously.</p>
+
+<p>"And that very part is just what would be given our Aggie if she were
+not in disgrace&mdash;yes, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not little Pretty?" demanded the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"My! my!"</p>
+
+<p>"This one girl whose name did not reach Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span> Marks was just as guilty as
+the others. That's right, Mr. Buckham. And she's got out of it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hi!" exclaimed the farmer, sharply. "You're accusin' her of makin' all
+the trouble for her mates."</p>
+
+<p>"If you didn't, Mr. Buckham," said Neale, boldly.</p>
+
+<p>"I most sartainly didn't!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham. "You know I wouldn't,
+Neale O'Neil; don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never did think you did so mean a thing," declared Neale, frankly.</p>
+
+<p>"But somebody told your teacher."</p>
+
+<p>"Wrote him."</p>
+
+<p>"And he thinks I done it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whoever it was must have signed your name to the letter."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody but marm does that," said the old man, quickly. "'Strawberry
+Farm'&mdash;that is what we call the place, you know, Neale."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"An' I got it printed on some letter paper, and marm always writes my
+letters for me on that paper. Then, if it's a <em>very</em> pertic'lar one, I
+sign it myself. But you know, Neale, I ain't no schollard. I handle a
+muck-fork better'n I do a pen."</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;yes, sir," agreed the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," continued the farmer, vigorously, "you find out if this here
+letter that was writ, and your teacher received, was writ on one of our
+letterheads. Of course, marm never done it; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span>&mdash;p'raps&mdash;&mdash; Wal! you
+find out if it re'lly did come from Strawberry Farm, and if Bob
+Buckham's name is onto it. That's all."</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Buckham refused to discuss the matter any further at that time.</p>
+
+<p>The busy fall days were flying. It was already the middle of October.
+Hallowe'en was in prospect and Carrie Poole, who lived in a modernized
+farmhouse out of town on the Buckshot Road, planned to give a big
+Hallowe'en party. Of course the two Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil
+were invited.</p>
+
+<p>Looking forward to the party divided interest among the older girls with
+the preparations for the performance of <em>The Carnation Countess</em>.</p>
+
+<p>A full fortnight before the thirty-first of October, came the first
+general rehearsal of the musical play. It could not be rehearsed with
+the scenery, of course, nor on the Opera House stage. The big hall of
+the high school building had a large stage and here the preliminary
+rehearsals were to be conducted.</p>
+
+<p>That was a Saturday afternoon eagerly looked forward to. Although the
+boys claimed to have much less interest in the play than the girls, even
+they were excited over the rehearsal. Few of the boys had speaking parts
+in <em>The Carnation Countess</em>, but all who had good voices were drafted by
+Professor Ware for the choruses.</p>
+
+<p>"And even those fellows whose voices are changing, and sound more like
+bullfrogs than anything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span> human," chuckled Neale O'Neil, "have got to
+help swell the 'Roman populace' or carry out the dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Neale O'Neil! you know very well," said Tess, reprovingly, "that
+the Romans aren't in this play at all, and there will be no dead to
+carry out."</p>
+
+<p>"Buzz! buzz! buzz-z-z-z!" crooned Dot, rocking her Alice-doll to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody'll slap at that bumblebee and try to kill it, if it doesn't
+look out," promised Agnes, pouting. "I wish you folks wouldn't talk
+about the old play. You&mdash;make&mdash;me&mdash;feel&mdash;so&mdash;bad!"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll feel worse when you see that Trix Severn trying to play Innocent
+Delight," sniffed Eva Larry, who chanced to be present in the Corner
+House sitting-room where the discussion was going on.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose she is really <em>bad</em> in it, Eva," Ruth said.</p>
+
+<p>"Not bad? She's&mdash;worse!" proclaimed the boisterous one. "Just wait. I
+know Miss Lederer is heart-broken over her."</p>
+
+<p>"She'll spoil the play, won't she?" asked Tess, the anxious. "I hope I
+won't spoil it, with my Swiftwing part."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you're all right, honey," Agnes assured her. "You know your part
+already, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. It's not nearly so hard to remember as the sovereigns of
+England. And that's how I come to get the part of Swiftwing, I guess."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>
+"What is the way?" asked Ruth, curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"She means the reason," Agnes put in, who had lately begun to criticise
+the family's use of English.</p>
+
+<p>"The reason I got the part?" queried Tess, gravely. "'Cause I could
+recite the sovereigns of England so well. I guess Miss Pepperill told
+Professor Ware, and so he gave me the part in the play."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" whispered Neale. "Of course, it couldn't be that they gave
+a certain person her part because, if it hadn't been for her, nobody
+would ever have thought of having a play for the benefit of the
+hospital."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope they gave it to her because they believed she was best fitted
+for the part," said Ruth, placidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, believe me!" exclaimed the slangy Eva, "Trix Severn is not fitted
+for her part. Wait till to-morrow afternoon!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have a good mind not to go to the rehearsal at all," sighed Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not mean that. If she could not be one of the performers
+herself, she was eager to see her fellow-pupils try their talents on the
+stage.</p>
+
+<p>There was no orchestra, of course; but the pianist gave the music cues,
+and the stage-manager lectured the various choruses and dancers, while
+Professor Ware put them through their musical parts. Most of the song
+numbers had become<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span> familiar to the young performers. Even Dot Kenway's
+class went through with their part quite successfully. And if they had
+all been "buzzing" as indefatigably as the smallest Corner House girl at
+home and abroad, it was not surprising that they were letter perfect.</p>
+
+<p>The dancing was another matter entirely. To teach a few pupils at a time
+certain steps, and then to try to combine those companies in a single
+regiment, each individual of which must keep perfect time, is a greater
+task than the inexperienced would imagine.</p>
+
+<p>The training of the girls and boys to whom had been assigned the r&ocirc;les
+of the more or less important characters in the play, was an unhappy
+task in some instances. While most children can be taught to sing, and
+many take naturally to dancing, to instruct them in the mysteries of
+elocution is a task to try the patience of the angels themselves.</p>
+
+<p>None of the professional principals in the cast were present at this
+rehearsal save the gracious lady who was to represent The Carnation
+Countess. She was both cheerful and obliging; but she did lose her
+temper in one instance and spoke sharply.</p>
+
+<p>A certain portion of the first act had been gone over and over again. It
+had been wrecked each time by one certain actor. They had left it and
+gone on with further scenes, and had then gone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span> back to the hard part
+again. It was no use; the girl who did not express her part properly
+balked them all.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare, Professor," the professional said tartly, "you must have
+selected this Innocent Delight with your eyes shut. In the first place,
+<em>why</em> a brunette when the part calls for a blonde, if any part ever
+called for one? It distresses me to say it, but if this Innocent Delight
+is a sample of what your Milton girls can do in a play, you would much
+better change your plans and put on <em>Puss in Boots</em>, instead of a piece
+like <em>The Carnation Countess</em>. The former would compass the calibre of
+your talent, I should say."</p>
+
+<p>"What did I tell you?" hissed Eva in Agnes' ear. "Trix Severn will spoil
+the whole show!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span>
+<a name="xv" id="xv"></a>CHAPTER XV<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE HALLOWE'EN PARTY</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> had become an established custom now for Tess and Dot to call on Mrs.
+Eland each Monday afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"She is such a nice lady. I wish you could meet my Mrs. Eland," Tess
+said to Mrs. Adams, who lived not far from the old Corner House, on
+Willow Street, and who was one of the first friends the Kenway sisters
+had made in Milton.</p>
+
+<p>Tess had been sent to Mrs. Adams on an errand for Mrs. MacCall, and now
+lingered at the invitation of the lady who loved to have any of the
+Corner House girls come in. "I wish you could meet my Mrs. Eland,"
+repeated Tess. "I believe it would do her good to have more callers.
+They'd liven her up&mdash;and she's so sad nowadays. I know <em>you'd</em> liven her
+up, Mrs. Adams."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, child, I hope I wouldn't make her unhappy, I'm sure. I believe in
+folks being lively if they can. I haven't a particle of use for
+<em>grumps</em>&mdash;no, indeed! 'Laugh and grow fat' is a pretty good motto."</p>
+
+<p>"But you're not fat," suggested Tess; "and you are 'most always
+laughing."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>
+"That's a fact; but it's not worrying that keeps me lean. 'Care killed
+the cat' my mother used to say; but care never killed her, I'm certain!
+Some folks is born for leanness, and I'm one of 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's real becoming to you," said Tess, kindly, eyeing the rather
+bony woman with reflective gaze. "And you're not as thin as Briggs, the
+baker. Mrs. MacCall says he doesn't cast a shadow."</p>
+
+<p>"My soul! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Adams. "And his loaves of bread have got
+so't they don't cast much of a shadow. I've been complaining to him
+about his bread. The rise in the price of flour can't excuse altogether
+the stinginess of his loaves.</p>
+
+<p>"He came here the other day about dark, and I had my porch door locked.
+I heard him knock and I asks, 'Who's there?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's the baker, ma'am,' says he. 'Here's your bread.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, bring it in,' says I, forgetting the door was locked.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't see how I can, ma'am,' he says, ''nless I put it through the
+keyhole, ma'am,' and he begun to giggle. But I put the come-up-ance on
+him," declared Mrs. Adams, with satisfaction. I says:</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't see what's to stop you, Myron Briggs. The goodness knows your
+loaves are small enough to go through the keyhole.' And he didn't have
+nothin' more to say to me."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span>
+"Why, I think that's very funny," said Tess, in her sober way. "I'll
+tell that to Mrs. Eland. Maybe it will amuse her."</p>
+
+<p>But on the next occasion when the two younger Corner House girls went to
+the hospital, Tess did not try to cheer the matron's spirits by
+repeating Mrs. Adams's joke on the baker.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eland had been crying. Even usually unobservant Dot noticed it. Her
+eyes were red and her face pale and drawn. The pretty pink of her cheeks
+and the ready twinkle in her gray eyes, were missing.</p>
+
+<p>On the table by the matron's side were some faded old letters&mdash;quite a
+bundle of them, in fact&mdash;tied with a faded tape. They were docketed
+carefully on their ends with ink that had yellowed with age.</p>
+
+<p>"These are letters from my uncle&mdash;'Lemon' Aden, as our little Dot called
+him," Mrs. Eland said, with a sad smile. "To my&mdash;my poor father. Those
+letters he put into my hand to take care of when we knew that awful fire
+that destroyed most of our city, was going to sweep away our home.</p>
+
+<p>"I took the letters and Teeny by the hand&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Was Teeny your sister's name, Mrs. Eland?" asked Tess, deeply
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>"So we called her," the matron said. "She was such a little fairy! As
+small and delicate as Dot, here. Only she was light&mdash;a regular
+milk-and-rose complexion and with red-gold hair."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span>
+"Like Tess' teacher's hair?" asked Dot, curiously. "She's got red hair."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, goodness!" cried Tess, "she's not pretty. That's sure, if her hair
+is red!"</p>
+
+<p>"Teeny's hair was lovely," said Mrs. Eland, ruminatively. "I can
+remember just how she looked. I was but four years older than she; but I
+was a big girl."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean when that awful fire came?" asked Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my dear. Father told me to take care of these letters; they were
+important. And to keep tight hold of Teeny's hand."</p>
+
+<p>"And didn't you?" asked Dot, to whose thoroughly Sunday-school-trained
+mind, all punishment directly followed disobedience.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. I did as he told me. He went back into the house to get
+mother. She was an invalid, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Like Mrs. Buckham," suggested Tess.</p>
+
+<p>A spasm of pain crossed the hospital matron's face, and she turned away
+for a moment. After a little she continued her story.</p>
+
+<p>"And then the fire came so suddenly that it swallowed the house right
+up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" gasped Dot.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Eland," whispered Tess, patting her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"It was very dreadful," said the gray lady, softly. "Teeny and I were
+grabbed up by some men in a wagon, and the horses galloped us away<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span> to
+safety. But our poor mother and father were buried in the ruins of the
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"And you saved the letters?" said Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"But lost Teeny," said Mrs. Eland, sadly. "There was such confusion in
+the camp of the refugees that many families were separated. By and by I
+came East&mdash;and I brought these letters. But&mdash;but they do me no good now.
+I can prove nothing by them. 'Corroborative evidence,' so the lawyers
+say, is lacking&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, well!" she said, breaking off suddenly. "All that does not
+interest you little ones."</p>
+
+<p>"So you couldn't give the letters to your Uncle Lem-u-el?" questioned
+Dot, careful to get the name right this time.</p>
+
+<p>"I never could even see my Uncle Lemuel," said Mrs. Eland, with a sigh.
+"I believe he knew I was searching for him during the last few years of
+his life; but he always kept out of my way."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! wasn't that bad of him!" cried Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. His end was most miserable. People said he must have at
+one time accumulated a great deal of money. He was supposed to be as
+rich a man as lived in Milton&mdash;richer than your Uncle Peter Stower. But
+he must have squandered it all in some way. He died finally in the
+Quoharis poorhouse. He did not belong in that town; but he wandered
+there in a storm and they took him in."</p>
+
+<p>"And didn't they find lots of money in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span> clothes when he was dead?"
+queried Dot, who had heard something about misers.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, no! He had no money, I am quite sure," said the lady,
+confidently. "The old townfarm keeper over there tells me that Mr.
+Lemuel Aden left nothing but some worthless papers and letters and a
+little memorandum book, or diary. I suppose they are hardly worth my
+claiming them. At least, I never have done so, and Uncle Lemuel died
+quite fifteen years ago."</p>
+
+<p>After that Mrs. Eland had no more to say about Lemuel Aden for the time
+being, but tried to amuse her little visitors, as usual. And Tess never
+told that joke about Briggs, the baker.</p>
+
+<p>This brings us, naturally, to the eve of All Saints, an occasion much
+given over to feasting and foolery. "When churchyards yawn&mdash;if they ever
+do yawn," suggested Neale, as he and the two oldest Corner House girls
+set forth on the crisp evening in question, to walk out to Carrie
+Poole's place.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess folks yarn about them, more than the graves yawn," said Agnes,
+roguishly. "Remember the garret ghost, Ruth?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean what Dot thought was a goat?" laughed the older girl. "I
+believe you!" she went on, caught in the contagion of slang.</p>
+
+<p>"That was before my time in Milton," said Neale, cheerfully. "But I have
+heard how you Corner House girls laid the ghost that had haunted the old
+place so long."</p>
+
+<p class="illuslink"><a name="pumpkin2" id="pumpkin2"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 434px;">
+<img src="images/illus3.jpg" width="434" height="600" alt="They saw two huge pumpkin lanterns grinning a welcome
+from the gateposts. Page 173" title="" />
+<span class="caption">They saw two huge pumpkin lanterns grinning a welcome
+from the gateposts. <span class="pl"><a href="#pumpkin">Page 173</a></span></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span>
+"I believe Uncle Peter must have known what it really was," said Ruth,
+thoughtfully. "But it delighted him, I suppose, to have people talk
+about the old house, and be afraid to visit him. He was a recluse."</p>
+
+<p>"And a miser, they say," Neale observed bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think we should say that," Ruth replied quickly. "Everybody
+tried to get money from Uncle Peter. Everybody but our mother and
+father, I guess. That is why he left most everything to us."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Agnes said, "they all declared he haunted the place himself
+after he died."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a wicked story!" Ruth sharply exclaimed. "I don't believe there
+is such a thing as a ghost, anyway!"</p>
+
+<p>"And you, going to a ghost party right now?" cried Neale, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"These will be play ghosts," returned Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <em>will</em> they? You just wait and see," chuckled the boy, for he and
+his close chum, Joe Eldred, were masters of ceremonies, and they had
+promised to startle Carrie and her guests with "real Hallowe'en ghosts."</p>
+
+<p>Before the Corner House girls and their escort reached the top of the
+hill on which the Poole house stood <a name="pumpkin" id="pumpkin"></a>they saw the two huge pumpkin
+lanterns grinning a welcome from the gateposts. There was a string of
+smaller Hallowe'en lanterns across the porch before the entrance to the
+house.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span> And every time anybody pushed open the gate, a ghostly
+apparition with a glowing head rose up most astonishingly behind the
+porch railing to startle the visitor.</p>
+
+<p>Neale and Joe had been at the house all the afternoon, putting up these
+and other bits of foolery. Joe's father, who was superintendent of the
+Milton Electric Light Company, allowed his son considerable freedom in
+the shops. Joe and Neale had brought out a good-sized battery outfit and
+the necessary wires and attachments; and when the girls stopped on the
+mat at the door to remove their overshoes, each got a distinct shock, to
+the great delight of the earlier guests who stood in the hall to observe
+the fun.</p>
+
+<p>"A ghost pushed you, Ruth Kenway!" cried Carrie, from the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you dare look down the well with a candle and see if you will see
+your future husband's face floating in the water, Aggie?" demanded Lucy
+Poole, Carrie's cousin.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't want to see my future husband," declared Agnes. "It will be bad
+enough to see him in reality when the awful time arrives."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span>
+<a name="xvi" id="xvi"></a>CHAPTER XVI<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE FIVE-DOLLAR GOLD PIECE</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Hush!</span>"</p>
+
+<p>"A deep, deep silence, please!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't crowd so close&mdash;don't, Mary Breeze! If there are ghosts I can't
+protect you from them," came in Eva Larry's shrill whisper. "I'm sure
+I've not been vaccinated against seeing spirits."</p>
+
+<p>This was after all the visitors had arrived, had removed their wraps,
+had been ushered into the big double parlors and seated. Across the far
+end of the room was drawn a sheet, and the lights were very dim.</p>
+
+<p>A figure in long cloak and conical cap, leaning on a long wand, appeared
+suddenly beside the curtain. A blue light seemed to glimmer faintly
+around the Hallowe'en figure and outline it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" gasped Lucy Poole, "there's the very Old Witch of them all, I do
+declare!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Old Wizard, you mean," laughed Agnes, who knew that Neale O'Neil
+was hidden behind the long cloak and the false face. He looked quite as
+feminine in this rig as any witch ever does look.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence!" commanded again the husky voice from behind the screen.</p>
+
+<p>With some little bustle the party fell still. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span> Hallowe'en Witch
+raised the wand and rapped the butt three times upon the little stand
+near by.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! oh! real spirits," gasped Eva. "They always begin with
+table-rappings, don't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" commanded the husky voice once more.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a perverse and unbelieving generation," croaked the witch. "Ye
+all doubt black magic and white astrology, and ghostly visitations. I am
+sent by Those Who Fly By Night&mdash;at the head of whom flies the Witch of
+Endor&mdash;who commune with goblins and fays&mdash;I am sent to convert you all
+to the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! Thunder! Lightning!"</p>
+
+<p>The ears of the company were almost deafened and their eyes blinded by a
+startling crash like thunder behind the screen and a vivid flash of
+zig-zag light across it.</p>
+
+<p>"See!" croaked the supposed hag. "Even Thunder and Lightning do my
+bidding. Now! Rain! Sleet! Advance!"</p>
+
+<p>The wondering spectators began to murmur. An almost perfect imitation of
+dashing sleet against the window panes and rain pouring from the
+water-spouts followed. Joe Eldred, behind the scenes, certainly managed
+the paraphernalia borrowed from the Milton Opera House with good effect.</p>
+
+<p>As the murmurs subsided the voice of the Hallowe'en Witch rose again:</p>
+
+<p>"To prove to you our secret knowledge of all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span> that goes on&mdash;even the
+innermost thoughts of your hearts&mdash;I will answer any question put to
+me&mdash;marvelously&mdash;in the twinkling of an eye. Watch the screen!"</p>
+
+<p>Primed beforehand, one of the boys in the back of the room shouted a
+question. The witch whirled about and pointed to the screen. Letters of
+fire seemed to flash from the point of the wand and to cross the sheet,
+forming the words of a pertinent reply to the query that had been asked.</p>
+
+<p>The girls laughed and applauded. The boys stamped and cheered.</p>
+
+<p>Question followed question. Some were spontaneous and the answers showed
+a surprisingly exact knowledge of the questioners' private affairs, or
+else a happy gift at repartee. Of course, the illuminated writing was
+some trick of electricity; nevertheless it was both amusing and
+puzzling.</p>
+
+<p>References to school fun, jokes in class-room, happenings known to most
+of those present who attended the Milton schools, suggested the most
+popular queries.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Eva Larry's sharp voice rang through the room. Her question was
+distinctly personal, and it shocked some few of the listeners into
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Who told on the basket ball team and got us all barred from taking part
+in the play?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Eva!" groaned Agnes, who sat beside her loyal, if unwise friend.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span>
+The witch's wand poised, seemed to hesitate longer than usual, and then
+the noncommittal answer flashed out:</p>
+
+<p>The Traitor is Here!</p>
+
+<p>There was a general shuffling of feet and murmur of surprise. The lights
+went up. The Hallowe'en Witch had disappeared and that part of the
+entertainment was over.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to have seen Trix Severn's face when that last question was
+sprung," whispered Myra Stetson to Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! it was awful!" murmured the Corner House girl. "Why did you do it,
+Eva?" she demanded of the harum-scarum girl on her other side.</p>
+
+<p>"Huh! do you s'pose I thought that all up by myself?" demanded Eva.</p>
+
+<p>"Why! didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am! Neale O'Neil gave it to me written on a piece of paper and
+told me when to shout it out. So now! I guess there's more than just us
+who have suspected that pussy-cat, Trix Severn."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't, girls, don't!" begged Agnes. "We haven't any proof&mdash;nor has
+Neale, I'm sure. I'll just tell him what I think about it."</p>
+
+<p>But she had no opportunity of scolding her boy chum on this evening. He
+was so busy preparing the other tricks and frolics which followed that
+Agnes could scarcely say a word to him.</p>
+
+<p>In the big front hall was a booth of black cloth,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span> decorated with
+crescents, stars, and astronomical signs in gilt.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the girls were paring apples in long "curls" and throwing the
+curls over their shoulders to see if the parings would form anything
+like an initial letter on the floor. It was something of a trick to get
+all the skin off the apple in one long, curling piece. But Agnes
+succeeded and threw the peeling behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see as that's much of any thing," Eva said, reflectively. "Oh,
+Aggie, it's a U!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a <em>me</em>!" laughed the Corner House girl. "Then I'm going to be my
+own best friend. Hurrah!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, little dunce; I mean it's the letter U," said Eva, squeezing her.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it looks more like E, dear," returned Agnes. "So it must stand
+for Eva. You and I are going to be chums <em>forever</em>!"</p>
+
+<p>Afterward Agnes remembered that U was an N upside down!</p>
+
+<p>When the girls proposed going out to the spring-house and each looking
+down the well to see whose reflection would appear in the water in the
+light of a ghostly candle, Carrie's mother vetoed it.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess not!" she said vigorously. "I'm not going to have candle-grease
+dripped down my well. Yes! I did it when I was a foolish girl&mdash;I know I
+did, Carrie. Your father had no business telling you. What he didn't
+tell you was that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span> your grandfather was a week cleaning out the well,
+and it was right at the beginning of a long, dry spell."</p>
+
+<p>"Who did you see in the well, Mother?" asked Carrie, roguishly.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind whom I saw. It wasn't your father, although he had begun to
+shine around me, even then," laughed Mrs. Poole.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly two of the girls screamed. A mysterious light had appeared in
+the black-cloth booth. The gilt signs upon it showed more plainly. There
+was a rustling noise, and then the flap of the booth was pushed back.
+The Hallowe'en Witch appeared in the opening.</p>
+
+<p>"Money!" cried the witch. "Bright, golden coin. It's that for which all
+witches are supposed to sell themselves. See!"</p>
+
+<p>Between thumb and finger the witch held up a shiny five-dollar gold
+piece. In the other hand was held a shallow pan of water.</p>
+
+<p>"To gain gold one must cross water," intoned the witch, solemnly. "This
+gold piece is freely the property of whoever can take it out of the pan
+of water," and with a tinkle the five-dollar coin was dropped into the
+pan.</p>
+
+<p>"The pan," said the witch, being careful not to turn so as to hide the
+pan, but, placing it on a taboret inside the tent, "remains in sight of
+all. One at a time ye may try to pick the coin out of the pan&mdash;one at a
+time. That all may have an equal chance, I will declare that as soon as
+one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span> candidate gets the coin another gold piece will be deposited in the
+pan for the next person attempting the feat."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, how silly!" cried Trix Severn, from the background. "If you want
+to give us each a counterfeit five dollars, why not hand it to us?"</p>
+
+<p>"If such exchange is desired, our master, Mr. Poole, stands ready to
+exchange each coin secured by the neophytes for a perfectly good, new,
+five-dollar bill," proceeded the witch.</p>
+
+<p>"There's your chance, Trix!" laughed one of the boys.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! he's only fooling," replied the hotel-keeper's daughter. She loved
+money.</p>
+
+<p>"Each and every one who wishes may try," went on the witch. "But there
+is a condition."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" muttered Trix. "Thought there was some string hitched to it."</p>
+
+<p>"And you're right, there, Trix," murmured Eva Larry.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence!" cried somebody.</p>
+
+<p>"A condition," went on the Hallowe'en Witch. "That condition will be
+whispered in the ear of each candidate who tries to seize the coin."</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you! I won't try," cried Lucy Poole, laughing and shaking her
+curls. "When he goes to make believe whisper in your ear, he'll bite
+you! I wouldn't trust that old witch!"</p>
+
+<p>The others laughed hilariously at this; but Trix Severn was pushing
+forward. If there was a gold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span> piece to be given away, she wanted first
+chance at it&mdash;string, or no string.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep your eyes on the pan!" cried the witch, waving empty hands in the
+air all about the pan and taboret, to show that there was "no
+flim-flam," as the boys called it. "Now! first neophyte step forward!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe he knows what that means," giggled Myra Stetson. "I
+don't."</p>
+
+<p>But she could not step in before Trix. Miss Severn pushed to the front
+and was nearest to the master of ceremonies.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a chance!" she cried. "You're going to lose your old gold
+piece."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a perfectly new one, Trixie," whispered somebody, shrilly. "It
+isn't old at all!"</p>
+
+<p>Without a word the witch beckoned the girl inside the booth. The flap of
+it dropped and they were hidden. The light was cast from a dim, green
+globe hung at the apex of the little tent. It made a ghostly glow over
+all inside.</p>
+
+<p>"Advance!" whispered the witch, with lips close to Trix Severn's pretty
+ear. "Advance, neophyte! The gold piece is yours for the taking. But
+only she who has no guilt and treachery upon her heart may seize the
+shining coin. <em>If you are faithful to your friends, take the coin!</em>"</p>
+
+<p>Trix started and her pretty face was cast in an angry look as she
+glanced aside at the masquerader. But she made no reply save by her
+out-thrust hand which dived into the water.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span>
+Instantly the crowd outside heard a piercing scream from Trix Severn.
+She burst out of the tent, and, amid the laughter and jeers of her
+comrades, sought shelter in another room.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you get the gold piece, Trix?" cried some.</p>
+
+<p>"Divide with a fellow, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say! there are more tricks than are dreamed of in your philosophy, eh,
+Trix?" gibed Eva Larry.</p>
+
+<p>And for that atrocious pun she was pushed forward to the tent, to be the
+next victim on the altar of the boys' perfectly harmless, though
+surprising joke.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody was able to pick the gold piece out of the pan of water, thanks
+to the electric battery that Joe Eldred had so skillfully connected with
+it.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span>
+<a name="xvii" id="xvii"></a>CHAPTER XVII<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">You</span> scared her," declared Agnes to Neale, on the way home from the
+party.</p>
+
+<p>"Scared who?" demanded the boy, with apparent innocence.</p>
+
+<p>"Trix."</p>
+
+<p>"What if I did? I scared a lot of them."</p>
+
+<p>"But you scared her worse than all the rest," Agnes said. "She was
+crying in the bedroom upstairs. Lucy told me."</p>
+
+<p>"Crying because she couldn't get that five-dollar gold piece," chuckled
+Neale. "I wish I could believe they were tears of repentance."</p>
+
+<p>"Who made you a judge, Neale O'Neil?" asked Ruth, with asperity.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not. Never was in politics," grinned the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Smartie!" said Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Trix was judged by her own conscience," Neale added soberly. "I never
+said a word to her about that letter."</p>
+
+<p>"What letter do you mean?" demanded Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>But Neale shut his lips on that. When Ruth was not by, however, he
+admitted to Agnes that he had borrowed from Mr. Marks the letter that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span>
+gentleman had received in reference to the strawberry raid. Neale was
+going to show it to Mr. Bob Buckham.</p>
+
+<p>"I told Mr. Marks there was some funny business about it. I knew Mr.
+Buckham never intended to report you girls to the principal. He didn't
+even know your names. Mr. Marks told me to find out about it and report
+to him. He knows that I once worked for Bob Buckham and that he's a
+friend of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neale!" groaned Agnes. "That won't help me."</p>
+
+<p>"Help you to what?"</p>
+
+<p>"To get a chance to act in the play," sighed the girl. "I did take the
+berries! So did the other girls. We deserve our punishment. Mr. Marks
+won't change his mind."</p>
+
+<p>But Neale was not altogether sure of that. There were things happening
+just then which pointed to several changes in the character parts of
+<em>The Carnation Countess</em>. It was being discovered by the director and
+stage manager that many of the characters should be recast. Some of the
+girls and boys to whom the parts had been allotted could not possibly
+compass them.</p>
+
+<p>This was particularly plain in the case of Innocent Delight and some
+others of the female r&ocirc;les. Some of the very brightest girls in the high
+school were debarred from taking part in the play because of Mr. Marks'
+ruling against the first basket ball team and some of their friends.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span>
+Neale O'Neil determined to see Mr. Bob Buckham as soon as possible.
+Another rehearsal would occur on this Saturday afternoon; so Friday
+evening it was arranged that the interests of the Corner House girls
+should be divided for one Saturday, at least.</p>
+
+<p>Tess and Dot were going to the hospital in the forenoon. Uncle Rufus had
+coaxed many fall flowers into late blooming this year and the little
+girls were to carry great bunches of asters and garden-grown
+chrysanthemums to decorate the children's ward for Thanksgiving, which
+came the very next Thursday.</p>
+
+<p>Ruth had shopping to do and must confer with Mr. Howbridge about a
+Thanksgiving treat for the Meadow Street tenants. "A turkey for each
+family&mdash;and perhaps vegetables," she declared. "So many of them are
+foreigners. They have learned to celebrate our Fourth of July&mdash;why not
+our Thanksgiving?"</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, it was easy for Neale and Agnes to obtain permission to drive
+out to Strawberry Farm. Neale got a horse and runabout from the
+stableman for whom he occasionally drove, and Agnes was proud, indeed,
+when she came out in her furs and pretty new hat, with the fur-topped
+boots she had just purchased, and stepped into the carriage beside her
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>Tom Jonah looked longingly after them from the yard, but Agnes shook her
+head. "Not to-day, old fellow," she told the good old dog.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span> "We're going
+to travel too fast for you," for the quick-stepping horse was anxious to
+be on the road.</p>
+
+<p>They departed amid the cheers of the whole family&mdash;and Sammy Pinkney,
+who threw a big cabbage-stalk after them for good luck and yelled his
+derisive compliments.</p>
+
+<p>"Fresh kid!" muttered Neale.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to spank that boy," sighed Agnes. "There never was so bad a
+boy since the world began, I believe!"</p>
+
+<p>"I expect that's what the neighbors said about little Cain and Abel,"
+chuckled Neale, recovering his good-nature at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Agnes, "Sammy's worse than little Tommy Rooney, who ran
+away from Bloomingsburg to kill Indians."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he kill any?" asked Neale.</p>
+
+<p>"Not here in Milton," Agnes said, laughing. "But he came near getting
+drowned in the canal."</p>
+
+<p>They drove on by the road that led past Lycurgus Billet's. The
+tumbled-down house looked just as forlorn as ever, its broken windows
+stuffed with old hats and gunny-sacks and the like, its broken steps a
+menace to the limbs of those who went in and out.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lycurgus was picking up chips around the chopping-block and was not
+averse to stopping for a chat. "No, Lycurgus ain't here," she drawled.
+"He's gone huntin'. This yere's the first day the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span> law's off'n deer an'
+Lycurgus 'lows ter git his share of deer-meat. He knows where there's a
+lick," and she chuckled in anticipation of a full larder.</p>
+
+<p>"Sue? Naw, she ain't here nuther. Mrs. Buckham&mdash;her that's the
+invalid&mdash;has sorter took a fancy ter Sue. She's been a-stoppin' there at
+that Strawberry Farm, right smart now.</p>
+
+<p>"You goin' there? Then you'll likely see her. She likes it right well;
+but she's a wild young 'un. I dunno's she'll stand it for long."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you miss her?" asked Agnes, as Neale prepared to drive on.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Sue? My soul!" ejaculated Mrs. Billet, showing a ragged row of
+teeth in a broad smile. "Dunno how I <em>could</em> miss one young 'un! There's
+a-plenty others."</p>
+
+<p>At the Buckham farm little Sue Billet was much in evidence. She was
+tagging right after the old farmer all the time, and it was plain whose
+companionship it was that made the half-wild child contented away from
+home.</p>
+
+<p>The farmer was hearty in his greeting, and he insisted that the visitors
+go right in "to see marm."</p>
+
+<p>"Wipe yer feet on the door-mat," advised the old man. "Me and Sue
+haster, or else Posy'll put us out. I never did see a gal with sech a
+mania for cleanin' floors as that Posy gal."</p>
+
+<p>The invalid in her bower of bright-colored wools welcomed Agnes warmly.
+"Here's my pretty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span> one! I declare you are a cure for sore eyes," she
+cried. "And how are the sisters? Why didn't they come to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>Neale remained outside to speak with Mr. Buckham for some minutes. The
+old farmer, with his silver-bowed spectacles on his nose looked hard at
+the letter Neale had brought.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I kin read it," he said ruefully, "or could if it was writ in
+letters of gold. But I kin see it ain't marm's hand of write&mdash;no, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I was very sure of that," Neale said quickly. "Let me read it to you,
+sir. You see it's written on your own stationery."</p>
+
+<p>"I see that," admitted the farmer. "Oh, yes; I see that."</p>
+
+<p>Neale began:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="salute1">"'<em>Mr. Curtis G. Marks</em>,</p>
+<p class="salute2">"'<em>Principal Milton High School.</em></p>
+
+<p>"'<span class="smcap">Dear Sir:</span> Mr. Robert Buckham wishes to bring to your attention
+the fact that on May twenty-third last, a party of your girls,
+including the members of the first basket ball team, on their
+way home from Fleeting, were delayed by an accident to the car,
+right beside his strawberry field; and that the girls named
+below entered the field without permission, and picked and ate a
+quantity of berries, beside destroying some vines. Mr. Buckham
+wishes to call your serious attention to the matter and may yet
+take steps to punish the culprits himself.'"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span>
+Then followed the names of all the girls whom Mr. Marks considered it
+his duty to punish. There was no signature at all to the letter; but it
+purported to come from the old farmer, and to be written at his
+instance.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno as ye kin call it forgery," muttered Mr. Buckham; "but it's
+blamed mean&mdash;that's what it is! It gives me a black eye with these gals,
+and the gals a black eye with the teacher. Sho! it's a real mean thing
+to do."</p>
+
+<p>"But who did it?" demanded Neale, earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ya-as! That's the question," returned Mr. Bob Buckham. "If we knowed
+that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure we don't know it?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man eyed him contemplatively. "You suspect somebody," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well! and so do you," declared the boy, warmly. "Only you've got some
+evidence, and we haven't."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!"</p>
+
+<p>"You must know who would have a chance to get your letter paper and
+write such a letter as that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" repeated the old man, reflectively.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how that girl came to be out here. But you know you saw
+her&mdash;and like enough she spoke of the strawberry raid&mdash;and she went in
+to see Mrs. Buckham&mdash;and she saw the writing paper&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>All the time that Neale was drawling out these phrases he was watching
+the old farmer's grim<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span> face keenly for some flicker of emotion. But it
+was just as expressionless as a face of stone.</p>
+
+<p>"It's fine weather, we're having, Neale," said Mr. Buckham, finally.</p>
+
+<p>At that the boy lost his temper. "I tell you it's a mean shame!" he
+cried. "Poor Aggie can't act in that old play, and she wants to. And
+Trix Severn is spoiling the whole show, and she oughtn't to be allowed
+to. And if she was the cause of making all these other girls get
+punished, she ought to be shown up."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's see that letter agin, son," said the old man, quietly. He peered
+at the handwriting intently for a minute. Then he said, with perfectly
+sober lips but a twinkle in his eye:</p>
+
+<p>"Ye sure marm didn't write it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just as sure as I can be! I know her handwriting," cried Neale. "You're
+fooling."</p>
+
+<p>"So all handwriting don't look alike, heh?" was the farmer's final
+comment, and he returned the letter to the boy's care.</p>
+
+<p>Neale looked startled for a moment. Then he folded the letter carefully
+and put it away in his pocket. On the way home he said to Agnes:</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Aggie!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you get me a sample of Trix Severn's handwriting?"</p>
+
+<p>"<em>What?</em>" gasped Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Just something she's written&mdash;a note, or an exercise, or something."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>
+Agnes stared at him in growing horror. "Neale O'Neil!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he demanded gruffly.</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to try to put that letter upon her&mdash;you are going to try
+to prove that she made all this trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"Well! what if?" he asked, still without looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Never! Never in this world will I let you do it," said Agnes, firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Huh! And I was only trying to see if there wasn't some way out of the
+mess for you," said Neale, as though offended.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't want to get out of it&mdash;even if you could help me&mdash;at such a
+price. Because <em>she</em> may have been a tale-bearer, do you think <em>I'd</em> be
+one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not even to get a chance to act in <em>The Carnation Countess</em>?" asked
+Neale, with a sudden smile.</p>
+
+<p>"No! And&mdash;and <em>that</em> wouldn't help me, anyway!" she added, quite
+despairingly.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span>
+<a name="xviii" id="xviii"></a>CHAPTER XVIII<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">MISS PEPPERILL AND THE GRAY LADY</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Tess</span> and Dot Kenway set off for the hospital in good season that
+Saturday morning, their arms laden with great bunches of flowers, all
+wrapped about with layers of tissue paper, for the November air was
+keen.</p>
+
+<p>On the corner of High Street, the wind being somewhat blusterous, Dot
+managed to run into somebody; but she clung to the flowers nevertheless.</p>
+
+<p>"Hoity-toity!" ejaculated a rather sharp voice. "Where are you going,
+young lady?"</p>
+
+<p>"To&mdash;to the horsepistol," declared the muffled voice of the
+matter-of-fact Dot.</p>
+
+<p>"Hospital! hospital!" gasped Tess, in horror. "This is Miss Pepperill."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! So it is Theresa and her little sister," said the teacher. "Humph!
+A child who mispronounces the word so <a name="badly" id="badly"></a><ins title="bady changed to badly">badly</ins> as that
+will never get to the institution itself without help. Let me carry
+those flowers, Dorothy. I am going past the Women's and Children's
+Hospital myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank her, Dot!" hissed Tess. "It's very kind of her."</p>
+
+<p>"You can carry the flowers, Miss Pepperill,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span> said the smallest Corner
+House girl, "if you want to. But I want Mrs. Eland to know I brought
+some as well as Tess."</p>
+
+<p>The red-haired lady laughed&mdash;rather a short, brusk laugh, that might
+have been a cough.</p>
+
+<p>"So you are going to see your Mrs. Eland, are you, Theresa?" she asked
+her pupil.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Miss Pepperill. We always see Mrs. Eland when we go to the
+hospital," said Tess. "But we like to see the children, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Dot; "there is a boy there with only one arm. Do you suppose
+they'll grow a new one on him?"</p>
+
+<p>That time Miss Pepperill <em>did</em> laugh in good earnest; but Tess
+despaired. "Goodness, Dot! they don't grow arms on folks."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" demanded the inquisitive Dorothy. "Our teacher was reading to
+us how new claws grow on lobsters when they lose 'em fighting. But
+perhaps that boy wasn't fighting when he lost his arm."</p>
+
+<p>"For pity's sake! I should hope not," observed Miss Pepperill. In a
+minute they came in sight of the hospital, and she added, in her very
+tartest tone of voice: "I shall go in with you, Theresa. I should like
+to meet your Mrs. Eland."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am," Tess replied dutifully, but Dot whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like the way she says 'Theresa' to you, Tess. It&mdash;it sounds
+just as though you were going to have a tooth pulled."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>
+Miss Pepperill had stalked ahead with Dot's bunch of flowers. Dot did
+not much mind having the flowers carried for her; but she did not
+propose letting anybody at the hospital make a mistake as to who donated
+that particular bouquet. As they went in she said to the porter, who was
+quite well acquainted with the two smallest Corner House girls by this
+time:</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Mr. John. <em>We</em> are bringing some flowers for the
+children's ward, Tess and me. That lady with&mdash;with the light hair, is
+carrying mine."</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately the red-haired school teacher did not hear this observation
+on the part of Dot.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way down the corridor, Mrs. Eland chanced to come out of one of the
+offices to meet the school teacher, face to face. "Oh! I beg your
+pardon," said the little, gray lady&mdash;for she dressed in that hue in the
+house as well as on the street. "Did you wish to see me?"</p>
+
+<p>The matron was small and plump; the teacher was tall and lean. The rosy,
+pleasant face of Mrs. Eland could not have been put to a greater
+contrast than with the angular and grim countenance of the bespectacled
+Miss Pepperill.</p>
+
+<p>The latter seemed, for the moment, confused. She was not a person easily
+disturbed in any situation, it would seem; but she was almost bashful as
+the little matron confronted her.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash; Really, are you Mrs. Eland?" stammered the school teacher.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span>
+"Yes," said the quietly smiling gray lady.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I have heard Theresa, here, speak so much of you&mdash;&mdash;" She actually
+fell back upon Tess for support! "Theresa! introduce me to Mrs. Eland,"
+she commanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, Mrs. Eland," said the cordial Tess. "I wanted you to meet Miss
+Pepperill. You know&mdash;she's my teacher."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! who wanted you to learn the succession of the rulers of England?"
+said Mrs. Eland, laughing, with a sweet, mellow tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am. The sovereigns of England," Tess said.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" Mrs. Eland added:</p>
+
+<div class="poemblock">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="io">"'First William, the Norman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then William, his son.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>"That old rhyme!" Miss Pepperill said, hastily, recovering herself
+somewhat. "You taught it to Theresa?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wrote it out for her," confessed Mrs. Eland. "I could never forget
+it. I learned it when I was a very little girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed?" said Miss Pepperill, almost gasping the ejaculation. "So did
+I."</p>
+
+<p>"That was some time ago," Mrs. Eland said, in her gentle way. "My mother
+taught me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! did she?" exclaimed the other lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. She was an English woman. She had been a governess herself in
+England."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" Again the red-haired teacher almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span> barked the expression.
+She seemed to labor under some strong emotion. Tess noted the strange
+change in Miss Pepperill's usual manner as she spoke to the matron.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it must have been my mother who taught me," the teacher said,
+in the same jerky way. "I'm not sure. Or&mdash;perhaps&mdash;I picked it up from
+hearing it taught to somebody else.</p>
+
+<div class="poemblock">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="io">"'First William, the Norman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then William, his son,&mdash;&mdash;'<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">Not easily forgotten when once learned."</p>
+
+<p>"Very true," Mrs. Eland said quietly. "I believe my little sister
+learned it listening to mother and me saying it over and over."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! yes," Miss Pepperill observed. "Your sister? I suppose much younger
+than you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; only about four years younger," said Mrs. Eland, sadly. "But I
+lost her when we were both very young."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! ah!" was Miss Pepperill's abrupt comment. "Death is sad&mdash;very sad,"
+and she shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment somebody spoke to the matron and called her away.
+Otherwise she might have stopped to explain that her sister had been
+actually lost, and that she had no knowledge as to whether she were dead
+or alive.</p>
+
+<p>The red-haired teacher and the two little Corner House girls went on to
+the children's ward.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>
+<a name="xix" id="xix"></a>CHAPTER XIX<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">A THANKSGIVING SKATING PARTY</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> rehearsal of <em>The Carnation Countess</em> that afternoon went most
+dreadfully.</p>
+
+<p>"It really is a shame!" chuckled Neale to Agnes, as he sat beside her
+for a few minutes after the boys acquitted themselves very well in their
+part. "It really is a shame," he went on, "what some of you girls can do
+to a part when it comes to acting. Talk about Hamlet's father being
+murdered to make a Roman holiday!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, you ridiculous boy! That isn't the quotation at all," admonished
+Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"No? Well, Hamlet's father was murdered, wasn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I prefer to believe him a mythical character," said Agnes, primly.</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate, something as bad will happen to you, Neale O'Neil, if you
+revile the girls of Milton High," declared Eva Larry, who was near
+enough to hear the boy's comment. "Oh, dear me! I believe I could make
+something of that part of Cheerful Grigg, myself. Rose Carey is a
+regular stick!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hear! hear!" breathed Neale, soulfully. "I'm sorry for Professor
+Ware."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>
+"Well! he gave them the parts," snapped Eva. "I'm not sorry for him!"</p>
+
+<p>The musical director was a patient man; but he saw the play threatened
+with ruin by the stupidity of a few. If his voice grew sharp and his
+manner impatient before the rehearsal was over, there was little wonder.</p>
+
+<p>The choruses, and even the little folks' parts, went splendidly&mdash;with
+snap and vigor. Some of the bigger girls walked through their r&ocirc;les as
+though they were in a trance.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare I should expect more animation and a generally better
+performance from marionettes," cried the despairing professor.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Marks came in, saw how things were going, and whispered a few words
+to Professor Ware. The latter fairly threw up his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I give it up for to-day," he cried. "You all act like a set of puppets.
+Pray, pray, young ladies! try to get into the spirit of your parts by
+next Friday. Otherwise, I shall be tempted to recommend that the whole
+play be given up. We do not want to go before the Milton public and make
+ourselves ridiculous."</p>
+
+<p>Neale said to Agnes as he walked home with her: "Why don't you learn the
+part of Innocent Delight? I bet you couldn't do it so much better than
+Trix, after all."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with scorn. "Learn it?" she repeated. "I know it by
+heart&mdash;and all the other girl's parts, too. I've acted them all out in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span>
+my room before the mirror." She laughed a little ruefully. "Lots of good
+it does me, too! And Ruth says I will have to sleep in another room, all
+by myself, if I don't stop it.</p>
+
+<p>"If I couldn't do the part of Innocent Delight better than Trix
+Severn&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She left the remainder of the observation to his imagination.</p>
+
+<p>The Thanksgiving recess was to last only from Wednesday afternoon till
+the following Monday morning. Friday and Saturday would be taken up with
+rehearsals&mdash;mostly because of the atrociously bad acting of some of the
+girls.</p>
+
+<p>The holiday itself, however, was free. Dinner was to be a joyous affair
+at the old Corner House. There were but two guests expected: Mr.
+Howbridge and Neale. Mr. Howbridge, their uncle's executor, and the
+Kenway sisters' guardian, was a bachelor, and he felt a deep interest in
+the Corner House girls. Of course, Agnes begged to have Neale come.</p>
+
+<p>In the Stower tenements in Meadow Street there was great rejoicing, too.
+Mr. Howbridge's own automobile had taken around the Thanksgiving baskets
+and the lawyer's clerk delivered them and made a brief speech at each
+presentation. The Corner House girls could not attend, for they were too
+busy in school and (at least, three of them) with their parts in the
+play. But Sadie Goronofsky reported the affair to Tess in these
+expressive words:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span>
+"Say! you'd oughter seen my papa's wife and the kids. You'd think they'd
+never seen anything to eat before&mdash;an' we always has a goose Passover
+week. My! it was fierce! But there was so much in that basket that it
+made 'em all fair nutty. You'd oughter seen 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kranz, the "delicatessen lady," as Dot called her, and Joe Maroni,
+helped fill the baskets. They were the two "rich tenants" on the Stower
+estate, and the example of the Corner House girls in generosity had its
+good effect upon the lonely German woman and the voluble Italian
+fruiterer.</p>
+
+<p>There were other needy people whom the Corner House girls remembered at
+this season with substantial gifts. Petunia Blossom, and her shiftless
+husband and growing family, looked to "gran'pap's missus" for their
+Thanksgiving fowl. And this year Seneca Sprague came in for a share of
+the Corner House bounty.</p>
+
+<p>Since the fatal day when Billy Bumps had secured a share of the
+prophet's generous thatch, Ruth had felt she owed Seneca something. The
+boys plagued him as he walked the streets in his flapping linen duster
+and broken straw hat; and older people were unkind enough to make fun of
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Seneca followed the scriptural command to the Jews regarding swine&mdash;and
+more, for he ate no meat of any kind. But the plump and luscious pig was
+indeed an abomination to Seneca.</p>
+
+<p>One day when Ruth went to market she saw<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span> a crowd of the market
+loiterers teasing Seneca Sprague, the man having ventured among them to
+peddle his tracts.</p>
+
+<p>The girl saw a smeary-aproned young butcher slip up behind the old man
+and drop a pig's tail into one of the pockets of his flapping duster.</p>
+
+<p>To the bystanders it was a harmless joke; to Seneca, Ruth knew, it would
+mean infamy and contamination. He would be months purging his conscience
+of the stain of "touching the unclean thing," as he expressed it.</p>
+
+<p>The girl went up to Seneca and spoke to him. She had a heavy basket of
+provisions and she asked the prophet to carry it home for her, which he
+did with good grace.</p>
+
+<p>When they arrived at the old Corner House Ruth told him if he would
+remove the linen coat she would sew up a tear in the back for him; and
+in this way she smuggled the "porker's appendage," as Neale O'Neil
+called it, out of the prophet's pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"And you ought to see the inside of that shack of his down on Bimberg's
+wharf," Neale O'Neil said. "I got a peep at it one day. You know it's an
+old office Bimberg used to use before he moved up town, and it's
+attached to his store-shed, and at the far end.</p>
+
+<p>"Seneca's got a little stove, and a cupboard, a cot to sleep on, a chair
+to sit in, and the walls are lined with bookshelves filled with old
+musty books."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>
+"Books!" exclaimed Agnes. "Does he read?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, in his way, he's quite erudite," declared Neale, smiling. "He
+reads Josephus and the Apocrypha, and believes them quite as much
+inspired as the rabbinical books of the Old Testament, I believe. Most
+of his other books relate to the prophetical writings of the old
+patriarchs.</p>
+
+<p>"He believes that the Pilgrims were descended from the lost tribes of
+Israel and that God allowed them to people this country and raise up a
+nation which should be a refuge and example to all the peoples of the
+earth."</p>
+
+<p>"Why! I think that is really a wonderful thought," Ruth said.</p>
+
+<p>"He's strong on patriotism; and his belief in regard to the divine
+direction of George Washington does nobody any harm. If everybody
+believed as Seneca does, we would all have a greater love of country,
+that's sure."</p>
+
+<p>Ruth sent down to the little hut on the river dock a basket of such good
+things as she knew Seneca Sprague would appreciate.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd love to send him warm underwear," she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"And a cap and mittens," Agnes put in. "He gives me the shivers when I
+see him pass along this cold weather, with his duster flapping."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank goodness he has put on socks and wears carpet slippers," said
+Ruth. "He believes it is unhealthy to wear many clothes. And he is
+healthy enough&mdash;goodness knows!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span>
+"But clothes are <em>awfully</em> comfortable," said the luxury-loving Dot.</p>
+
+<p>"Right you are, Dottums," agreed Agnes. "And I'd rather be comfortable
+than so terribly healthy."</p>
+
+<p>The weather had become intensely cold during the past fortnight. Steady
+frost had chained the river and ponds. There had been no snow, but there
+was fine skating by Thanksgiving.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the holiday the two older Corner House girls and Neale
+O'Neil set off to meet a party of their school friends for a skating
+frolic on the canal and river. They met at the Park Lock, and skated
+down the solidly frozen canal to where it debouched into the river.</p>
+
+<p>Milton young folks were out in full force on this Thanksgiving morning,
+despite the keen wind blowing from the northwest. Jack Frost nipped
+fingers and toes; but there were huge bonfires burning here and there
+along the bank, and at these the skaters could go ashore to warm
+themselves when they felt too cold.</p>
+
+<p>River traffic, of course, was over for the season. The docks were for
+the most part deserted. Some reckless small boys built a fire of
+shavings and old barrels right on Bimberg's dock.</p>
+
+<p>When the first tar-barrel began to crackle, the sparks flew. Older
+skaters saw the danger; but when they rushed to put the fire out, it was
+beyond control. The Corner House girls and Neale<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span> O'Neil were among the
+first to see the danger. Seneca Sprague's shack was then afire.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind. The old man's up town," cried one boy. "If it burns up it
+won't be much loss."</p>
+
+<p>"And it <em>will</em> burn before the fire department gets here," said one of
+the girls.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Seneca! I expect his poor possessions are treasures to him," said
+Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>"Cracky!" ejaculated Neale, suddenly, as the flames mounted higher.
+"What about the poor old duffer's books?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neale!" gasped Ruth. "And they mean so much to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw!" observed one of the other boys. "They're not really worth
+anything, are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whether they are or not, they are valuable to Seneca," Ruth repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, goodness!" was the ejaculation of a third boy. "I wouldn't risk
+going into that shack if they were worth a million. See! the whole end
+of it is ablaze!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span>
+<a name="xx" id="xx"></a>CHAPTER XX<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">NEALE'S ENDLESS CHAIN</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Skaters</span> from both up and down the river augmented the crowd of
+spectators gathered along the shore to watch the fire. The fire-bells
+were clanging uptown, but as yet the first machine had not appeared. The
+firemen would have to attack the blaze from the street end of the dock,
+anyway.</p>
+
+<p>"Father's got goods stored in the shed," said Clarence Bimberg, "and
+they'll try to save them. I guess Seneca's old shack will have to go."</p>
+
+<p>"And all those books you told us about, Neale," Agnes cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Wish I could get 'em out for him!" declared the generous boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw! I can tell you how to do it. But you wouldn't dare," chuckled
+Clarence.</p>
+
+<p>"How?" demanded Neale.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't dare!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;mebbe not. But tell me anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"There's an old trap-door in the dock under that office-shack."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean it, Clarry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there is. I know it's there. But it mightn't be open now&mdash;I mean
+maybe it's nailed down. I don't believe Seneca knows it's there. The
+boards just match."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span>
+"Let's try it!" exclaimed Neale.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neale, you wouldn't!" gasped Agnes, who had heard the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he wouldn't," scoffed Clarence. "He's only bluffing. Father
+used to let us play around the old shack before Seneca got it to live
+in. And I found the trap. But I never said anything about it."</p>
+
+<p>Neale looked serious, but he said: "Just show me how to reach it,
+Clarry."</p>
+
+<p>"Why," said Clarence, "the ice is solid underneath the wharf. You can
+see it is. Skate right under, if you want," and he laughed again,
+believing Neale in fun.</p>
+
+<p>"Show me," said the white-haired boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much I won't! Why, the wharf boards are afire already, and the
+sparks will soon be raining down there."</p>
+
+<p>"Show me," demanded Neale. "If there <em>is</em> a trap there&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neale!" Agnes cried again. "Don't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you be a little goose, Aggie," said the earnest boy. "Come on,
+Clarry."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't want to," said the other boy, seeing that Neale was in
+earnest now. "We'll get burned."</p>
+
+<p>Neale grabbed his hand and whirled him around, and they shot in toward
+the burning wharf, whether Clarence would or no!</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, boys, keep away from there!" shouted a man from the next dock.
+"You'll get burned."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>
+"Oh, Neale, come back!" wailed Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"You hear, Neale O'Neil?" gasped Clarence, struggling in the bigger
+boy's grasp. "<em>I don't want to go!</em>"</p>
+
+<p>"Show me where the trap is," said the boy who had been brought up in a
+circus. "Then you can run if you like. I'm not afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"I am!" squealed Clarence Bimberg.</p>
+
+<p>But he was forced by the stronger Neale to skate under the burning
+wharf. They bumped about for half a minute among the piles and the
+broken ice. They could hear the flames crackling overhead, and the smoke
+puffed in between the planks. The black ice was solid and there was
+light enough to see fairly well.</p>
+
+<p>"There! There!" shrieked the frightened Clarence. "You can see it now,
+Neale! Let me go!"</p>
+
+<p>It did not look like a trap-door to Neale. Yet some short, rotting steps
+led up out of the frozen water to the flooring of the old wharf. The
+moment he essayed to climb these steps on his skates, Clarence broke
+away and shot out from under the burning dock.</p>
+
+<p>Neale was too determined to reach the interior of Seneca Sprague's shack
+to save the old prophet's books, to bother about the defection of his
+schoolmate. If Joe Eldred had only been at hand, <em>he</em> would have stood
+by!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neale! can you open it?" quavered a voice behind and below him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span>
+Neale almost tumbled backward from the steps, he was so amazed. He
+looked down to see Agnes' rosy, troubled face turned up to his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"For pity's sake! get out of here, Aggie," he begged.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't!" she returned, tartly.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll get burned."</p>
+
+<p>"So will you."</p>
+
+<p>"But aren't you afraid?" the boy demanded, in growing wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I am!" she gasped. "But I can stand it if <em>you</em> can."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <em>me</em>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry up!" cried Agnes. "I can help carry out some of the books."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Neale had been pounding on the boards overhead. Suddenly two
+of them lifted a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got it!" yelled Neale, in delight, and above the crackling of the
+flames and the confusion of other sounds without.</p>
+
+<p>He burst up the rickety, old trap with his shoulders, and was met
+immediately by a stifling cloud of smoke. The interior of Seneca
+Sprague's shack was filled with the pungent vapor, although the flames
+were still on the outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't get burned, Neale!" cried Agnes, coughing below from a rift of
+smoke, as the boy climbed into the little room.</p>
+
+<p>"You better go away," returned Neale, in a muffled voice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>
+"I'll take an armful of books when I do go&mdash;if you'll hand 'em down to
+me," cried his girl chum.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Aggie! if you get hurt Ruth will never forgive me," cried Neale,
+really troubled about the Corner House girl's presence in this place of
+danger.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you to give me some of those books, Neale O'Neil!" cried Agnes.
+"If you don't I'll come up in there and get them."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't be in such a hurry!" returned Neale.</p>
+
+<p>He came to the smoky opening with his arms full and began to descend the
+steps, which creaked under his weight. He slipped on the skates which he
+had had no time to remove, and came down with a crash, sitting upon the
+lowest step. But he did not loose his hold on the books.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neale! are you hurt?" Agnes demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Only in my dignity," growled the boy, grimly.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes began to giggle at that; but she grabbed the books from him. "Go
+back and get some more&mdash;that's a good boy!" she cried, and, whirling
+about, shot out from under the wharf.</p>
+
+<p>The worried Ruth, who had not seen the first of this adventure, was
+standing near. Agnes deposited the volumes at her sister's feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out for them, Ruthie!" Agnes cried. "Neale's going to get them
+all."</p>
+
+<p>With this reckless promise she sped back under the burning wharf. Water
+was pouring upon the goods' shed now, freezing almost as fast as it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span>
+left the hose-pipes, but the firemen had not reached the little shack.</p>
+
+<p>Joe Eldred and some of the other boys reached the scene of Ruth's
+trouble and quickly understood the situation. If Neale O'Neil wanted to
+save Seneca Sprague's books, of course they would help him&mdash;not, as Joe
+said, that they "gave a picayune for the crazy old duffer."</p>
+
+<p>"Form a chain, boys! form a chain!" commanded Neale's muffled voice from
+inside the burning shack, when he learned who was below. And this the
+crowd did, passing the armfuls of books back and out from under the
+wharf as fast as Neale could gather them and hand them down.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes found herself put aside when Joe and his comrades got to work. But
+they praised her pluck, nevertheless.</p>
+
+<p>"Those Corner House girls are all right!" was the general comment.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Seneca came running to the end of a neighboring dock and took a
+flying leap&mdash;linen duster, carpet slippers, and all&mdash;down upon the ice.
+He was determined at first to get to his shack on the wharf, for he did
+not see what the boys were doing for him.</p>
+
+<p>Men in the crowd ran to hold the poor old prophet back from what would
+likely have been his doom. He screamed anathemas upon them until they
+led him to where Ruth stood and showed him the great heap of books. Then
+almost immediately he became calm.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span>
+<a name="xxi" id="xxi"></a>CHAPTER XXI<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE CORNER HOUSE THANKSGIVING</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was truly a Thanksgiving feast at the old Corner House that day, and
+it was enjoyed to the full by all. Nor was there a table in all Milton
+around which sat a more apparently incongruous company.</p>
+
+<p>At first glance one might have thought that the Corner House girls had
+put forth a special effort to gather together a really fantastical
+company to celebrate the holiday. Uncle Rufus, at least, had never
+served quite so odd an assortment of guests during all the years he had
+been in Mr. Peter Stower's employ.</p>
+
+<p>At one end of the table the old Scotch housekeeper presided, in a fresh
+cap and apron. Her hard, rosy face looked as though it had received an
+extra polishing with the huck towel on the kitchen roller.</p>
+
+<p>At the far end of the long board, covered with the best old damask the
+house afforded, and laid with the heavy, sterling plate that Unc' Rufus
+tended so lovingly, and the cut glass of old-fashioned pattern, was
+silver-haired Mr. Howbridge. He was a man very precise in his dress,
+given to the niceties of the toilet in every particular. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span> wore
+rimless glasses perched on his aristocratic beak of a nose, a well
+cared-for mustache much darker than his hair, and had very piercing
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>On his right was prim Aunt Sarah&mdash;Aunt Sarah, who never seemed to belong
+to the family, who lived so self-centered an existence, but who was sure
+to have her meddling finger in everything that went on in the old Corner
+House, especially if it was desired that she should not.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Sarah glared across the table at a tall, lean, ascetic-looking man
+in a rusty, old-fashioned, black, tail coat that was a world too wide
+for him across the shoulders, and with his sleek, long hair parted very
+carefully in the middle, and falling below the high collar of the coat.</p>
+
+<p>Those who had never seen Seneca Sprague save in his flapping duster and
+straw hat, would scarcely have recognized him now.</p>
+
+<p>Ruth, after the fire, when the prophet had been made to understand that
+all his possessions for which he really cared were saved, had induced
+him to come home with them to eat the Thanksgiving feast.</p>
+
+<p>"It is fitting that we should give thanks&mdash;yea, verily," agreed Seneca,
+his mind rather more muddled than usual by the excitement of the fire.
+"I saw the armies of Armageddon advancing with flame-tipped spears and
+flights of flashing arrows. They were all&mdash;all&mdash;aimed to overwhelm me.
+But their hands were stayed&mdash;they could not prevail against me. Thank
+you, young man," he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span> added, briskly, to Neale O'Neil. "You have a pretty
+wit, and by it you have saved my library&mdash;my books that could not be
+duplicated. I have the only Apocrypha extant with notes by the great
+Swedenborg. Do you know the life of George Washington, young man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty well, sir, thank you," said Neale, gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"It is well. Study it. That great being who sired our glorious country,
+is yet to come again. And he will purge the nation with fire and cleanse
+it with hyssop. Verily, it shall come to pass in that day&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But we mustn't keep Mrs. MacCall waiting for us, Mr. Sprague," Ruth had
+interrupted him by saying. "You can tell us all about it later."</p>
+
+<p>They had bundled him into a carriage near the burned dock, to hide his
+torn duster and wild appearance, and had brought him to the old Corner
+House&mdash;Ruth and Agnes and Neale. There he was soon quieted. Neale helped
+him remove the traces of the struggle he had had with those who kept him
+from going into the fire, and likewise helped him dress for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Peter Stower's ancient wardrobe furnished the most of Seneca's
+holiday garb. "Mr. Stower was a meaty man," the prophet said, in some
+scorn. "His girth should have been upon his conscience, for verily he
+lived for the greater part of his life on the fat of the land. His
+latter days were lean ones, it is true; but they could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span> absolve him
+from his youthful gastronomic sins."</p>
+
+<p>Ruth had some fear that the odd, old fellow might make trouble at the
+table; but Seneca Sprague had not always lived the untamed life he now
+did. He had been well brought up, and had associated with the best
+families of Milton and the county in his younger days.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Howbridge was surprised to find Seneca Sprague sitting in the
+ancient parlor of the old Corner House when he arrived&mdash;an unfriendly
+room which was seldom opened by the girls. But the lawyer shook hands
+with Seneca and told him how glad he was to hear that his library had
+been saved from the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"One may say by a miracle," the prophet declared solemnly. "As Elijah
+was fed by the raven in the wilderness, so was my treasure cared for in
+time of stress."</p>
+
+<p>He talked after that quite reasonably, and when the girls in their
+pretty dresses fluttered to their seats about the table, and with Neale
+O'Neil filled them all, the company being complete, Ruth, looked to
+Seneca to ask a blessing.</p>
+
+<p>His reverent grace, spoken humbly, was most fitting. Linda opened the
+door. A great breath of warm, food-laden air rushed in. Uncle Rufus
+appeared, proudly bearing the great turkey, browned beautifully and
+fairly bursting with tenderness and&mdash;dressing!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh-ee!" whispered ecstatically, the smallest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span> Corner House girl. "He
+looks so <em>noble</em>! Do&mdash;do you s'pose, Tess, that it will <em>hurt</em> him when
+Uncle Rufus carves?"</p>
+
+<p>"My goodness!" exclaimed Neale, "it will hurt us if he doesn't carve the
+turk. I couldn't imagine any greater punishment than to sit here and
+taste the other good things and renege on that handsome bird."</p>
+
+<p>But Seneca Sprague did not hear this comment. He ate heartily of the
+plentiful supply of vegetables; but he would not taste the turkey or the
+suet pudding.</p>
+
+<p>It was a merry feast. They sat long over it. Uncle Rufus set the great
+candelabra on the table and by the wax-light they cracked nuts and drank
+sweet cider, and the younger ones listened to the stories of their
+elders.</p>
+
+<p>Even Aunt Sarah livened up. "My soul and body!" she croaked, with rather
+a sour smile, it must be confessed, "I wonder what Peter Stower would
+say to see me sitting here. Humph! He couldn't keep me out of my home
+forever, could he?"</p>
+
+<p>But nobody made any reply to that statement.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span>
+<a name="xxii" id="xxii"></a>CHAPTER XXII<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">CLOUDS AND SUNSHINE</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> day following Thanksgiving that year would ever be known as "Black
+Friday" in the annals of Milton school history. And it came about like
+this.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Ware had given notice the Saturday previous that there would
+be two rehearsals on that day of <em>The Carnation Countess</em>. The morning
+rehearsal was for the choruses, the dance numbers and tableaux, and
+especially for those halting Thespians whom the professor called "lame
+ducks"&mdash;those who had such difficulty in learning their parts.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon rehearsal was the first full rehearsal&mdash;every actor, both
+amateur and professional, must be present, and the play was to be run
+through from the first note of the overture to the final curtain. For
+the first time the scholars would hear the orchestral arrangement of the
+music score.</p>
+
+<p>And right at the start&mdash;at the beginning of the morning rehearsal&mdash;the
+musical director was balked. Innocent Delight was not present.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with that girl?" demanded the irate professor of
+everybody in general and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span> nobody in particular. "Was Thanksgiving too
+much for her? I expected some of you boys would perform gastronomic
+feats to make the angels tremble. But girls!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Severns went down to Pleasant Cove over Thanksgiving. They haven't
+got home yet," announced a neighbor of the missing Trix.</p>
+
+<p>"What? Gone out of town? And after all I said about the importance of
+to-day's rehearsals!" exclaimed the director. "This is no time for a
+part as important as that of Innocent Delight to be read."</p>
+
+<p>But they had to go on with the play in that halting manner. Trix
+Severn's lines were read; but her absence spoiled the action of each
+scene in which she should have appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"But goodness knows!" snapped Eva Larry, who, with the rest of the
+"penitent sisterhood," as Neale called them, watched the rehearsal,
+"Trix will spoil the play anyway. But won't she get it when she comes
+this afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>The play halted on to the bitter end. The amateur performers grew tired;
+the director grew fussy. His sarcastic comments toward the end did not
+seem to inspire the young folk to a spirited performance of their parts.
+They were discouraged.</p>
+
+<p>"We should announce this on the bills as a burlesque of <em>The Carnation
+Countess</em>," declared Professor Ware, "and as nothing else. Milton people
+will laugh us out of town."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>
+The girls and teachers in the audience realized even better than the
+performers just how bad it was. The little folk were excused, for they
+had all done well, while the director tried his best to whip the others
+into some sort of shape for the afternoon session.</p>
+
+<p>"I know very well that Madam Shaw will refuse to sing her part with a
+background of such blunderers!" exclaimed Professor Ware, bitterly, at
+the last. "Nor will the other professionals be willing to risk their
+reputations, and the play itself, in such a performance. Our time has
+gone for nothing. And if Innocent Delight does not appear for the
+afternoon performance&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>His futile threats made little impression upon the girls and boys. They
+were&mdash;for the time&mdash;exhausted. Ruth went home in tears&mdash;although she had
+not drawn one word or look of critical comment from the sharp-spoken
+director. Tess was very solemn, and continued to repeat her part of
+Swiftwing over and over to herself&mdash;although she knew it perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>Dot danced along, saying: "Well! I don't care! <em>I buzzed</em> all right&mdash;I
+know I did! Buzz! buzz! buzz-z-z-z!"</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness gracious!" ejaculated the nervous Agnes, who felt for them
+all, though not having a thing to do with the play&mdash;&mdash; "Goodness
+gracious! you were wishing for a 'buzzer,' Dot Kenway. I don't think you
+need one. Nature must have made a mistake and meant you for a bee,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>
+anyway. I don't see how you ever came to be born into the Kenway family,
+instead of a bee-hive!"</p>
+
+<p>Dot pouted at that, but quickly changed her expression when she saw
+Sammy Pinkney careering along the street like a young whirlwind. Sammy,
+for his sins, had been forbidden to participate in <em>The Carnation
+Countess</em>&mdash;not that it seemed to trouble him a bit! Anything that
+occurred in the schoolhouse was trial and tribulation to Master Pinkney.
+They could not fool him into believing differently, just by calling it a
+"play!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, bully! bully! bully!" he sang, coming along the street in a "hop,
+skip and a jump pace," the better to show his joy. "Oh, Dot! oh, Tess!
+you never can guess what's happened."</p>
+
+<p>"Something <em>awful</em>, I just know," said Tess, "or you wouldn't be so
+glad."</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" grunted Sammy, stopping in the middle of his fantastic dance, and
+glaring at the next to the youngest Corner House girl, "You wait, Tess
+Kenway! You're 'teacher's pet'; but nobody else likes old Pepperpot. I
+guess it will be in the paper to-night, and everybody will be glad of
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened to Miss Pepperill?" demanded Ruth, seeing into the
+mystery of the boy's speech&mdash;at least, for a little way.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you <em>ain't</em> heard?" crowed Sammy.</p>
+
+<p>"And we're not likely to, if you don't hurry up and say something,"
+snapped Agnes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span>
+"Well!" growled Sammy. "She's hurt-ed. She was run down by an automobile
+on High Street. They wanted to take her to the hospital&mdash;the one for
+girls and babies, you know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Mrs. Eland's hospital!" gasped Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"Yep. But she wouldn't go there. They say she made 'em take her to her
+boarding house. And she's hurt bad. And, oh, goody! there won't be any
+school Monday!" cried the young savage, beginning to dance again.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you fool yourself!" exclaimed Agnes, for Tess was crying frankly,
+and Dot had a finger in her mouth. "Don't you fool yourself, Sammy
+Pinkney! They'll have plenty of time to find a substitute teacher before
+school opens on Monday."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they <em>won't</em>!" wailed the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes they will. And I hope it will be somebody a good deal worse than
+Miss Pepperill. So there!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but there <em>ain't</em> nobody worse," said Sammy, with conviction, while
+Tess looked at her older sister with tearful surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Aggie!" she said sorrowfully. "I hope you don't mean that. 'Cause
+I've got to go to school Monday as well as Sammy."</p>
+
+<p>Tess was really much disturbed over the news of Miss Pepperill's injury.
+She would not wait for luncheon but went straight over to the house
+where her teacher boarded, and inquired for her.</p>
+
+<p>The red-haired, sharp-tongued lady was really<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span> quite badly hurt. There
+was a compound fracture of the leg, and Dr. Forsyth feared some injury
+to the brain, for Miss Pepperill's head was seriously cut. Tess learned
+that they had been obliged to shave off all the teacher's red, red hair!</p>
+
+<p>"And that's awful!" she told Dot, on her return. "For goodness only
+knows what color it will be when it grows out again. Miss Lippit (she's
+the landlady where Miss Pepperill boards) showed it to me. And it's
+beautiful, long, long hair."</p>
+
+<p>"Mebbe it will come out like Mrs. MacCall's&mdash;pepper-and-salt color,"
+said Dot, reflectively. "We haven't got a pepper-and-salt teacher in
+school, have we?"</p>
+
+<p>Such light reflections as this did not please Tess. She really forgot to
+repeat the part of Swiftwing, the hummingbird, in her anxiety about the
+injured Miss Pepperill.</p>
+
+<p>At two o'clock the big rehearsal was called.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe I will go back with you," Agnes said, to Ruth. "I can't
+sit there and hear Trix murder that part. Oh, dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"I bet you won't ever eat any more strawberries," chuckled Neale, who
+had come over the back fence of the Corner House premises, that being
+his nearest way to school.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak to me of them!" cried Agnes. "A piece of Mrs. MacCall's
+strawberry shortcake would give me the colic, I know&mdash;<em>just to look at
+it</em>!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span>
+"Oh, you'll get all over that before the strawberry season comes around
+again," her older sister said placidly. "You'd better come, Aggie."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, Aggie, do come!" urged Neale. "Be a sport. Come and see and
+hear us slaughter <em>The Carnation Countess</em>. It'll be more fun than
+moping here alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll just cover my eyes and ears when Innocent Delight comes on,"
+Agnes declared.</p>
+
+<p>But Trix was not at the rehearsal. Information from the Severn house
+revealed the fact that the family was still at Pleasant Cove. It was
+evident that Trix's interest in <em>The Carnation Countess</em> had flagged.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Ware gathered the principal professionals around him. His
+speech was serious. They had given the performance in several cities and
+large towns, and had whipped into shape some very unpromising material;
+but the director admitted that he was discouraged with the outlook here.</p>
+
+<p>"I am inclined to say right here and now: Give it up. Not that the
+children as a whole do not average as high in quality as those of other
+schools; but the talent is lacking to take the amateur parts which have
+always been assigned to the girls and boys. The girls' parts are
+especially weak.</p>
+
+<p>"One or two bad parts might be ignored&mdash;overlooked by a friendly
+audience. But here is this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span> Innocent Delight girl, not here at all at
+the most important rehearsal we have had. And she is <em>awful</em> in her
+part, anyway; I admit it.</p>
+
+<p>"I was misinformed regarding her. I received a note before the parts
+were given out, stating that she had had much experience in amateur
+theatricals. I do not believe that she ever even acted in parlor
+charades," added the professor, in disgust. "She must have a friendly
+letter-writer who is a professional booster.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is too late to change such a part, I am afraid. But to read
+her lines this afternoon, all through the play, will cripple us
+terribly. Even if she is a stick, she can look the part, and walk
+through it."</p>
+
+<p>Somebody tugged at the professor's sleeve. When he looked around he saw
+a flaxen-haired boy with a very eager face.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Professor! there's a girl here that knows Trix Severn's part
+better than she does herself."</p>
+
+<p>"What's this? Another booster?" demanded the director, sorrowfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Just try her! She knows it all by heart. And she's a blonde."</p>
+
+<p>"Why haven't I seen her before, if she's so good? Is she in the chorus?"
+demanded the doubtful professor.</p>
+
+<p>"She hasn't had any part in the play at all&mdash;yet," declared Neale
+O'Neil, banking all upon this chance for Agnes. "But you just try her
+out!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span>
+"She knows the lines?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly," declared the boy, earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>He dared say no more, but he watched the professor's face sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose she can do any more harm than the other," muttered the
+desperate director. "Send her up here, boy. Odd I should not have known
+there was an understudy for Innocent Delight."</p>
+
+<p>Neale went down to the row of seats in which Agnes and a few of the
+"penitent sisterhood" sat. "Say!" he said, grinning at Agnes and
+whispering into her pretty ear, "Now's your chance to show us what you
+can do."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, Neale O'Neil?" she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"The professor is looking for somebody to walk through Trix's part&mdash;just
+for this rehearsal, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neale!" exclaimed the Corner House girl, clasping her hands.
+"They'd never let me do it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe you can," laughed Neale. "But you can try if you want
+to. He told me to send you up to him. There he stands on the stage now."</p>
+
+<p>Agnes rose up giddily. At first she felt that she could not stand.
+Everything seemed whirling about her. Neale, with his past experience of
+the circus in his mind, had an uncanny appreciation of her feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"Buck up!" he whispered. "Don't have stage-fright.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span> You don't have to
+say half the words if you don't want to."</p>
+
+<p>She flashed him a wonderful look. Her vision cleared and she smiled.
+Right there and then Agnes, by some subtle power that had been given her
+when she was born into this world, became changed into the character of
+Innocent Delight&mdash;the part which she had already learned so well.</p>
+
+<p>She had sat here throughout each rehearsal and listened to Professor
+Ware's comments and the stage manager's instructions. She knew the cues
+perfectly. There was not an inflection or pose in the part that she had
+not perfected her voice and body in. The other girls watched her move
+toward the stage curiously&mdash;Neale with a feeling that he had never
+really known his little friend before.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, who's this?" asked one of the male professionals when Agnes came
+to the group upon the stage.</p>
+
+<p>"The very type!" breathed Madam Shaw, who had just come upon the
+platform in her street costume. "Professor! why did you not get <em>this</em>
+girl for Innocent Delight?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have," returned the director, drily. "You are the one who has studied
+the part?" he asked Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," she said, and all her bashfulness left her.</p>
+
+<p>"Open your first scene," commanded the professor, bruskly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span>
+The command might have confused a professional&mdash;especially when the
+player had had no opportunity of rehearsing save in secret. But Agnes
+had forgotten everything but the character she was to play. She opened
+her lips and began with a vivacity and dash that made the professionals
+smile and applaud when she was through.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" commanded the professor, immediately. "If you can do that as
+well in the play&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! but, sir," said Agnes, suddenly coming to herself, and feeling her
+heart and courage sink. "I can't act in the play&mdash;not really."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"I am forbidden."</p>
+
+<p>"By whom, I'd like to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Marks. We girls of the basket ball team cannot act. It is a
+punishment."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed?" said the director, grimly. "And are all the girls Mr. Marks
+sees fit to punish at this special time, as able as you are to take
+part?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye-yes, sir," quavered Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" It was a most expressive observation. But the director said
+nothing further about Mr. Marks and his discipline. He merely turned and
+cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Ready for the first act! Clear the stage."</p>
+
+<p>To Madam Shaw he whispered: "Of course, one swallow doesn't make a
+summer."</p>
+
+<p>"But one good, smart girl like this one may come near to saving the day
+for you, Professor."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span>
+<a name="xxiii" id="xxiii"></a>CHAPTER XXIII<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">SWIFTWING, THE HUMMINGBIRD</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> orchestra burst into a low hum of sweet sounds. Agnes had heard them
+tuning up under the stage for some time; but back in the little hall
+where the amateur performers were gathered in readiness for their cues,
+she had not realized that the orchestra members had taken their places.</p>
+
+<p>Having watched the rehearsals so closely since they began, she could now
+imagine the tall director with his baton, beating time for the opening
+bars.</p>
+
+<p>The overture swelled into the grand march, and then went on, giving a
+taste of the marches, dances, and singing numbers, finally with a crash
+of sound, announcing the moment when the curtain, at the real
+performance, would go up.</p>
+
+<p>"Now!" hissed the stage manager, beckoning on the first chorus.</p>
+
+<p>Innocent Delight was in it. Innocent Delight went up the steps and into
+the wings with the others, as in a dream. As she had not rehearsed with
+the chorus before, she made a little mistake in her position in the
+line; and she failed to keep quite good time in the dancing step.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear me!" gasped Carrie Poole. "Now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span> you're going to spoil it all,
+Aggie Kenway! You'll be worse than Trix, I suppose!"</p>
+
+<p>Agnes merely smiled at her. Nothing could disturb her poise just then.
+<em>She was going to act!</em></p>
+
+<p>They saw the boys across the stage, ready, too, to enter&mdash;some of them
+grinning and foolish looking; others very serious. Neale smiled at Agnes
+and waved his hand encouragingly. Her confident pose delighted him.</p>
+
+<p>Now they were on! It was easy, after all, to keep step with the music.
+She knew the words of the opening song perfectly. Agnes had a clear, if
+light contralto voice; the alto part was easy for her to sing.</p>
+
+<p>With a vim that seemed not to have been in the chorus before, the number
+came to a finish. The girls and boys fell back. Innocent Delight was in
+the centre of the stage, ready to welcome the Carnation Countess.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes was slow in speaking; her words seemed to drag a bit. Madam Shaw
+was waiting impatiently to come on. But the stage manager whispered
+shrilly:</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right, my dear! quite right! The Countess is supposed to come on
+in a sedan chair, and you must give her time."</p>
+
+<p>The professionals noted the girl's familiarity with the stage
+instructions; always, wherever the manager had explained in the earlier
+rehearsals the reason for some stage change, Innocent Delight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span> had the
+matter pat. The action of the play was not retarded in any particular
+for the new girl. And her ability in handling the character of the
+blithe, joyous, light-hearted girl was most natural.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow, this chief amateur part going so well, pulled the others up to
+the mark. But there was still much to be wished for in the case of
+Cheerful Grigg, the twins, Sunbeam and Moonbeam, and Lily White.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to get hold of some of those other girls that Mr. Marks
+considers it his duty to punish," growled the professor. "What's all
+this foolishness about, anyway? Doesn't he want the play to be a
+success?"</p>
+
+<p>He said this to Miss Lederer, the principal's assistant. She shook her
+head, sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry that you can't have them, Professor," she said. "But of
+course, this is only temporary for Agnes."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" he demanded angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, she cannot play Innocent Delight for you," the teacher said
+firmly. "I am not sure that Mr. Marks will like it as it is."</p>
+
+<p>"He's <em>got</em> to like it!" interrupted the professor. "I've just got to
+have the girl&mdash;there are no two ways about it. I tell you, without her
+the schools might as well give up trying to put on the play. That other
+girl, who was wished on me, is not fitted for the part at all."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have given it to her."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span>
+"And I can take it away; you watch me!" snapped the director. "And I am
+going to have this Agnes, as you call her, Marks or no Marks!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that a pun?" the teacher asked archly. "For that is why Agnes Kenway
+cannot act in the play. Bad marks."</p>
+
+<p>"What's her heinous crime?" demanded the professor.</p>
+
+<p>"Stealing," said the assistant principal, with twinkling eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Stealing! What did she steal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Strawberries."</p>
+
+<p>"My goodness! I'll pay for them," rejoined the director, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid that will not satisfy Mr. Marks."</p>
+
+<p>"What will satisfy him, then?" demanded the professor. "For I am
+determined to have that girl play Innocent Delight for me, or else I
+will not put on the play. I would rather shoulder the expense thus far
+incurred&mdash;all of it&mdash;than to go on with a lot of numskulls such as seem
+to have been selected for many of these important r&ocirc;les. For pity's sake
+let me have at least one girl who shows talent."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Madam Shaw, the prima donna, came to Agnes after it was all
+over and put her arms tight around the young girl's shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you, my dear?" she asked, looking kindly down upon Agnes'
+blushing face.</p>
+
+<p>"Agnes Kenway, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! one of the Corner House girls!" cried the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span> lady. "I have heard of
+you sisters. Three of you were in the play from the first. And why not
+you, before?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" fluttered Agnes, now waking up from the beautiful dream in which
+she had lived from two o'clock till five. "I am not in it&mdash;really. I
+cannot play the part in the opera house."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, pray?" demanded Madam Shaw in some surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have broken some rules and am being punished," admitted
+Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>Madam Shaw hid a smile quickly. "Punished at home?" she asked gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! There is nobody to punish us at home."</p>
+
+<p>"No?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. We have no mother or father. There is only Ruth, and we none of us
+want to displease Ruth. It wouldn't be fair."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Ruth?"</p>
+
+<p>"The oldest," said Agnes. "She is in the play. But she hasn't a very
+important part. I think she might have been given a better one!"</p>
+
+<p>"But <em>you</em>? Who is punishing you? Your teacher?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Marks."</p>
+
+<p>"No? Not really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The basket ball team and some other girls can only look on&mdash;we
+can't act. He said so. And&mdash;and we deserve it," stammered Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, indeed! But does the poor Carnation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span> Countess deserve it?" demanded
+Madam Shaw, with asperity. "I wonder what Mr. Marks can be thinking of?"</p>
+
+<p>However, everybody seemed to feel happier and less discouraged about the
+play when this rehearsal was over; and Agnes went home in a seventh
+heaven of delight.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care so much now if I never have a chance again," she said,
+over and over again. "I've <em>shown</em> them that I can act."</p>
+
+<p>But Ruth began to be anxious. She said to Mrs. MacCall that evening:
+"Suppose, when Agnes gets older, she should determine to be a player?
+Wouldn't it be <em>awful</em>?"</p>
+
+<p>The old Scotch woman bit off her thread reflectively. "Tut, tut!" she
+said, at last. "That's borrowing trouble, my dear. And you're a bit
+old-fashioned, Ruthie Kenway. Perhaps being an actress isn't so awful a
+thing as we used to think. 'Tis at least a way of earning one's living;
+and it seems now that all girls must work."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't they work in your day, Mrs. MacCall?" asked Ruth, slyly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not to be called so," was the prompt reply. "Those that had to go into
+mills and factories were looked down upon a wee bit, I am afraid. Others
+of us only learned to scrub and cook and sew and stand a man's tantrums
+for our living. It was considered more respectable to marry a bad man
+than to work for an honest wage."</p>
+
+<p>Saturday Agnes was not called upon at all.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span> She heard that Trix was at
+home again; but there were no rehearsals of the speaking parts of <em>The
+Carnation Countess</em>. Only the dances and ensembles of the choruses were
+tried out in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>The girls heard nothing further regarding the re-distribution of the
+parts&mdash;if there were to be such changes made. They only understood that
+the play would be given, in spite of the director's recent despairing
+words.</p>
+
+<p>And it was known, too, that the following rehearsals would be given on
+the stage of the opera house itself. The scenery was ready, and on
+Saturday morning of the next week the first costume rehearsal would be
+undertaken.</p>
+
+<p>Dot and her little friends were quite over-wrought about their bee
+dresses. They had learned to dance and "drone" in unison; now they were
+all to be turned into fat brown bees, with yellow heads and stripes on
+their papier-mach&eacute; bodies, and transparent wings.</p>
+
+<p>Tess, as Swiftwing, the chief hummingbird, was a brilliant sight indeed.
+Only one thing marred Tess Kenway's complete happiness. It was Miss
+Pepperill's illness.</p>
+
+<p>For the unfortunate teacher was very ill at her boarding house. Her head
+had been hurt when the automobile knocked her down. And while her broken
+bones might mend well, Dr. Forsyth was much troubled regarding the
+patient.</p>
+
+<p>The Corner House girls heard that Miss Pepperill<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span> was quite out of her
+head. She babbled about things that she never would have spoken of in
+her right mind. And while she had so vigorously refused to be taken to
+the Women's and Children's Hospital when she was hurt, she talked about
+Mrs. Eland, the matron, a good deal of the time.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to see my Mrs. Eland and tell her that Miss Pepperill asks
+for her and if she has found her sister," Tess announced, after a long
+conference with the teacher's landlady, who was a kindly, if not very
+wise maiden lady.</p>
+
+<p>"I see no harm in your telling Mrs. Eland," Ruth agreed. "Perhaps Mrs.
+Eland would go to see her, if it would do the poor thing any good."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you say 'poor thing' about Miss Pepperill, Ruthie?" demanded
+Dot, the inquisitive. "Has she lost all her money?"</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness me! no, child," replied the oldest Corner House girl; nor did
+she explain why she had said "poor thing" in referring to the sick
+teacher. But everybody was saying the same; they did not expect her to
+live.</p>
+
+<p>The substitute teacher who took Miss Pepperill's place in school had
+possibly been warned against Sammy Pinkney; for that embryo pirate
+found, at the end of the first day of such substitution, that he was no
+better off than he had been under Miss Pepperill's r&eacute;gime.</p>
+
+<p>Tess was very serious these days. She was troubled about the teacher who
+was ill (for it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span> the child's nature to love whether she was loved in
+return or no), her lessons had to be kept up to the mark, and, in
+addition, there was her part as Swiftwing.</p>
+
+<p>She knew her steps and her songs and her speeches, perfectly. But upon
+the Saturday morning when the dances were rehearsed, Tess found that
+there was more to the part than she had at first supposed.</p>
+
+<p>There was to be a tableau in which&mdash;at the back of the stage&mdash;Swiftwing
+in glistening raiment, was the central figure. A light scaffolding was
+built behind a gaudy lace "drop" and to the steps of this scaffolding,
+from the wings on either side of the stage, the birds and butterflies
+flew in their brilliant costumes to group themselves back of the gauze
+of the painted drop.</p>
+
+<p>Tess was a bit terrified when she was first taken into the flies, for
+Swiftwing first of all was to come floating down from above to hover
+over and finally to rest upon a great carnation.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Tess saw that she was to stand quite securely upon the very
+top step of the scaffolding. A strong wire was attached to her belt at
+the back so that she could not possibly fall.</p>
+
+<p>Below, and on either side of Tess, was a smaller girl, each costumed as
+a butterfly. These were tossed up to their stations by the
+<a name="strong" id="strong"></a><ins title="strongs changed to strong">strong</ins> arms of stage-hands. They could not be
+held by wires as Tess was, for their wings were made to vibrate slowly
+all through the scene.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>
+On lower steps others of the brilliantly dressed children&mdash;all
+butterflies and winged insects&mdash;were grouped. From the front the picture
+thus formed was a very beautiful one indeed; but the children had to go
+over and over the scene to learn to do their part skillfully and to
+secure the right effect from the front.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you scared up there, little girl?" one of the women playing in
+the piece asked Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"No-o," said the Corner House girl, slowly. "I'm not scared. But I shall
+be glad each time when the tableau is over. You see, these other little
+girls have no belt and wire to hold them, as I have."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are so much higher than the others!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am. It only looks so. It's what the stage man said was an
+optical delusion," Tess replied, meaning "illusion." "I can touch those
+other girls on either side of me&mdash;yes, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>And she did touch them. Each time that she went through the scene, and
+the butterflies' wings vibrated as they bent forward, Tess' hands, which
+were out of sight of the audience, clutched at the other girls' sashes.</p>
+
+<p>Tess was a sturdy girl for her age. Her hands at the waists of the two
+butterflies steadied them as they posed on this day for the final
+rehearsal of the difficult tableau.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it!" called out the manager. "Now! Hold it! Lights!"</p>
+
+<p>The glare of the spotlight shot down upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span> grouped children from
+above the proscenium arch.</p>
+
+<p>"Steady!" shouted the stage manager again, for the whole group behind
+the gauze drop seemed to be wavering.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold that pose!" repeated the man, commandingly.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not the children who moved. There was the creaking sound of
+parting timbers. Somebody from the back shouted a warning&mdash;but too late.</p>
+
+<p>"Down! All of you down to the stage!"</p>
+
+<p>Those on the lower steps of the scaffolding jumped. The stage hands ran
+in to catch the others; but the higher little girls could not leap
+without risking both life and limb!</p>
+
+<p>A pandemonium of warning cries and shrieks of alarm followed. <a name="scaffold" id="scaffold"></a>The
+scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward through the drop which
+retarded it at first, but finally tearing the drop from its fastenings
+in the flies.</p>
+
+<p>Swiftwing, the hummingbird, did not add her little voice to the general
+uproar. She was safely held by the wire cable hooked to her belt at the
+back.</p>
+
+<p>But the butterflies were helpless. The men who tried to seize them from
+the rear could not do so at first because the scaffolding structure fell
+out upon the stage.</p>
+
+<p>The Corner House girl, frightened as she was, miraculously preserved her
+presence of mind. As she had already done before during the rehearsals,
+she seized the sashes of her two smaller schoolmates at the first alarm.
+Their feet slipped from the foothold, but Tess held them.</p>
+
+<p class="illuslink"><a name="scaffold2" id="scaffold2"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 435px;">
+<img src="images/illus4.jpg" width="435" height="600" alt="The scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward
+through the drop. Page 238" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward
+through the drop. <span class="pl"><a href="#scaffold">Page 238</a></span></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span>
+Neale had taught Tess, and even Dot, how to use their strength to better
+advantage than most little girls. Tess was sure of her own safety in
+this emergency, and she allowed her body to bend forward almost double,
+as the two frightened little butterflies slipped from the falling
+scaffolding.</p>
+
+<p>For a dreadful moment or two, their entire weight hung from Tess
+Kenway's clutching hands. Her shoulders felt as though they were being
+dislocated; but she gritted her teeth and held on.</p>
+
+<p>And then two of the men caught the little, fluttering butterflies by
+their ankles.</p>
+
+<p>"Let 'em come!" yelled one of the men.</p>
+
+<p>Tess loosed her grasp as the scaffolding crashed to the stage. The last
+to be lowered, Swiftwing came down, so frightened she could not think
+for a moment where she was.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Tess, darling!" gasped Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Sister's brave little girl!" murmured Ruth.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I didn't spoil the tableau, did I?" Tess asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Spoil it? My goodness, Tess Kenway," shouted Neale O'Neil, who,
+likewise, had run to her, "you made the biggest hit of the whole show!
+If you could do that at every performance <em>The Carnation Countess</em> would
+certain sure be a big success!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>
+<a name="xxiv" id="xxiv"></a>CHAPTER XXIV<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">THE FINAL REHEARSAL</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Before</span> the tableau in which Tess Kenway had so covered herself with
+glory was again rehearsed, the scaffolding was rebuilt as a series of
+broad steps and made much lower.</p>
+
+<p>Tess was not to be frightened out of playing her part as Swiftwing, the
+hummingbird.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I was not in danger," she reported to Mrs. Eland, when she and Dot
+went to see the gray lady as usual the next Monday afternoon. "The wire
+held me up so that I could not possibly fall. It was only the other two
+girls who might have fallen. But they hurt my arms."</p>
+
+<p>"If you had been a <em>real</em> hummingbird," put in the practical Dot, "you
+could have caught one of them with your beak and the other in your
+claws. Butterflies aren't very heavy."</p>
+
+<p>"Those butterflies were heavy enough," sighed her sister.</p>
+
+<p>"It was splendid of you, Tess!" cried Mrs. Eland. "I am proud of you."</p>
+
+<p>"So are we," announced Dot. "But Aunt Sarah says we ought not to praise
+her too much or maybe she'll get biggity. <em>What's</em> 'biggity'?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>
+"Something I'm sure Tess will never be," said the matron, hugging Tess
+again. "Why so sober, dear? You ought to be glad you helped save those
+two little girls from a serious fall."</p>
+
+<p>"I am," Tess replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, what is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's Miss Pepperill."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear me!" murmured Dot. "She fusses over that old Miss Pepperpot as
+though she were one of the family."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she really worse, dear?" asked Mrs. Eland, softly, of Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"They think she is. And&mdash;and, Mrs. Eland! She does call for you so
+pitifully! Miss Lippit told me so."</p>
+
+<p>"Calls for <em>me</em>?" gasped the matron, paling.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am. Miss Lippit says she doesn't know why. Miss Pepperill never
+knew you very well before she was hurt. But I told Miss Lippit that I
+could understand it well enough," went on Tess, eagerly. "You'd be just
+the person I'd want to nurse me if I were sick."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, my dear," smiled Mrs. Eland, beginning to breathe freely
+once more.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Miss Lippit knows Miss Pepperill pretty well. She knew her out
+West."</p>
+
+<p>"Out West?" repeated Mrs. Eland.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am. Miss Lippit says that isn't her real name. She was a
+'dopted child."</p>
+
+<p>"Who was?" demanded the matron, all in a flutter again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span>
+"Miss Pepperill. She was brought up by a family named Pepperill. Seems
+funny," said Tess, gravely. "<em>She</em> lost her mother and father in a
+fire."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess that's why her hair is red," said Dot, not believing her own
+reasoning, but desiring to be in the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eland was silent for some minutes. "She isn't mad, is she?"
+whispered Dot to Tess.</p>
+
+<p>But the latter respected her friend's silence. Finally the matron said
+pleasantly enough: "I am going out when you children go home. You must
+show me where this school teacher of yours lives. If I can be of any
+service&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She put on her bonnet and the long gray cloak in a few minutes, and the
+three set forth from the hospital. Dot clung to one hand and Tess to the
+other of the little gray woman, as they went to Miss Lippit's boarding
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Mrs. Eland," Tess said to the spinster, who was both landlady
+and friend of the injured school teacher. "She is my friend and the
+matron of the hospital where Miss Pepperill went with us one day."</p>
+
+<p>"When she carried <em>my</em> flowers and gave some to the children," muttered
+Dot, who had never gotten over that.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad to see you, Mrs. Eland," said Miss Lippit. "I do not know why
+Miss Pepperill calls for you so much. She is a singularly friendless
+woman."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>
+"I thought she had always lived in Milton?" said the matron, in an
+inquiring way.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, ma'am. She lived in the town I came from. We children always
+thought she was Mr. and Mrs. Pepperill's granddaughter; but it seemed
+not. She was picked up by them wandering about in Liston after the big
+fire."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eland repeated the name of the Western city, holding hard to a
+chairback the while, and watching Miss Lippit hungrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am," said the landlady. "We learned all about it. Miss
+Pepperill was so small she didn't know her own name&mdash;only 'Teeny.'"</p>
+
+<p>"'Teeny'!" repeated Mrs. Eland, pale to her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"She had a sister. She remembered her quite plainly. Marion. When Miss
+Pepperill was younger she was always expecting to meet that sister
+somewhere. But I haven't heard her say anything about it of late years."</p>
+
+<p>"Show&mdash;show me where the poor thing lies," murmured Mrs. Eland.</p>
+
+<p>They went into the bedroom. Miss Pepperill, her head looking very
+strange indeed with nothing but bandages upon it, sat up suddenly in
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Eland! isn't it?" she said weakly. "Pleased to meet you. You are
+little Tess Kenway's friend. Tell me!" she cried, clasping her hands,
+"did you find your sister, Mrs. Eland?"</p>
+
+<p>The matron ran with streaming eyes to the bed and folded the poor,
+pain-racked body in her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span> arms. "Yes, yes!" she sobbed. "I've found her!
+I've found her!"</p>
+
+<p>The two smallest Corner House girls did not see this meeting; but they
+brought home the report from Miss Lippit that Mrs. Eland was going to
+make arrangements to stay all night with Miss Pepperill, and perhaps
+longer. Her work at the hospital would have to be neglected for a time.</p>
+
+<p>These busy days, however, the young folk were neglecting nothing which
+was connected with the forthcoming benefit for the Women's and
+Children's Hospital. <em>The Carnation Countess</em> was <em>not</em> to be a failure.</p>
+
+<p>The changes made in the assignment of the speaking parts caused some
+little heartburnings; but the director was determined in the matter.
+First of all he brought Mr. Marks to his way of thinking.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't give the play if I can't have my own Innocent Delight, Cheerful
+Grigg, and some of the others," said the director, firmly.</p>
+
+<p>There was good reason for taking the r&ocirc;le away from Trix Severn&mdash;she had
+neglected rehearsals. Nevertheless, she was very much excited when she
+learned that the part had been given to Agnes Kenway, who was making
+such a success of it.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Severn, in tears, went to the principal of the Milton High School
+and laid her trouble before him. Mr. Marks listened grimly and then
+showed her the letter purporting to come from the proprietor of
+Strawberry Farm, in which the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span> girls who had raided the farmer's patch
+were named&mdash;excluding herself.</p>
+
+<p>Beside this letter he put a specimen of Trix's own handwriting. It
+chanced to be the note which had suggested Trix for the part of Innocent
+Delight in the play.</p>
+
+<p>"It strikes me, Miss Severn," said the principal, sourly, "that you are
+getting to be a ready letter writer. Don't deny the authorship of these
+scripts. Your teachers are all agreed that you wrote them both.</p>
+
+<p>"This one to the professor is reprehensible enough. I am sorry that a
+girl of the Milton High School should write such a note. But this
+other," and his voice grew very stern, "is criminal&mdash;yes, criminal!</p>
+
+<p>"I have learned from Mr. Buckham personally, that your father's
+automobile was stalled one day in front of his house and that you went
+in and met his wife, who is an invalid.</p>
+
+<p>"You must have had it in your mind then to make trouble for your
+schoolmates, and learning that Mr. Buckham did not write himself, you
+stole a sheet of his letter paper, and wrote this contemptible screed.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall tell your parents of your action. I do not feel that it is
+within my province to punish you for such a contemptible thing. However,
+knowing that you have been a traitor to your mates, I withdraw my order
+for their punishment on the spot. I never have, and never will, accept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span>
+the evidence of a traitor in a matter of this character.</p>
+
+<p>"As Mr. Buckham himself holds no hard feelings about the foolish prank
+of last May, I shall say no more about it. But the contempt in which
+your schoolmates must hold you, if they learn that you wrote this
+letter, should be its own punishment."</p>
+
+<p>Agnes and the others, however, paid little attention to Trix Severn.
+Agnes knew, and the others suspected, that Trix was the one who had
+told; but the Corner House girl felt that she had deserved the
+punishment she received, and was deeply grateful to Mr. Marks for
+withdrawing the order against her playing in <em>The Carnation Countess</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Eva got the part of Cheerful Grigg; some of the other members of the
+basket ball team obtained good parts, too. They studied hard and were
+able to act creditably at the final and dress rehearsal.</p>
+
+<p>The play was to be given on three nights and one afternoon of Christmas
+week. School was closed for the holidays, and little was talked of or
+thought about among the Corner House girls and their mates, but the
+play.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I won't spoil the play," said Tess, with a worried air. "And I
+hope we will make&mdash;oh! lots and lots of money for the hospital, so that
+Mrs. Eland can stay there. For now, you know, with her sister sick,
+she'll need her salary more than ever."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span>
+<a name="xxv" id="xxv"></a>CHAPTER XXV<br />
+<br />
+<span class="small">A GREAT SUCCESS</span></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Miss Pepperill</span> was not going to die. Dr. Forsyth made that good prophecy
+soon after Mrs. Eland had taken on herself the nursing of her strangely
+met sister.</p>
+
+<p>The school teacher&mdash;so grim and secretive by nature&mdash;had been in a fever
+of worry and uncertainty long before the accident that had stretched her
+on this bed of illness. The relief her mind secured when her sister,
+Marion, and she were reunited did much to aid her recovery.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody would have suspected that the calm, demure, little gray woman and
+the assertive, sharp-tongued school teacher were sisters; but the
+evidence of their own childish remembrances was conclusive. And that
+little Mrs. Eland should be the older of the two was likewise
+astounding.</p>
+
+<p>There was still a sad secret on Mrs. Eland's heart. Mr. and Mrs. Buckham
+knew it. The smallest Corner House girl had prodded the doubt of her
+father's honesty to the surface of the hospital matron's mind.</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't no fool like an old fool, it's my bounden duty to say," Mr.
+Bob Buckham remarked on the Monday of Christmas week, as he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span> warmed his
+hands before the open fire on the hearth of the old Corner House sitting
+room.</p>
+
+<p>He had come to town ostensibly to bring the Corner House girls'
+Christmas goose&mdash;a noble bird which Ruth had picked out of his flock
+herself on a recent visit to Strawberry Farm. But he confessed to
+another errand in Milton.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd no business to talk out like I done about Abe and Lem Aden that
+first day you children was at our house. But I've allus hugged that
+injury to my breast. Marm says I ain't no business to, and I know she's
+right. But it hurt me dreadfully when I was a boy to lose my marm.</p>
+
+<p>"The rascality lay between old Lem and Abe. Course we couldn't never
+prove anything on Lem, and he never had a good word himself for his
+brother. I read his letters to Abe&mdash;Mrs. Eland, she showed 'em to
+me&mdash;and there wasn't a word in 'em about my father's five hundred."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear me!" Ruth replied, "I wish it could be cleared up for the sake
+of Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill. You don't care about the money now,
+Mr. Buckham."</p>
+
+<p>"No. Thank the good Lord, I don't. And as I say, I blame myself for ever
+mentioning it before you gals."</p>
+
+<p>"'Little pitchers have big ears,'" quoted Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>At that Dot flared up. "I'm not a little pitcher! And I haven't got big
+ears!" The smallest Corner House girl knew now that her ill-timed
+remarks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span> during her first call with Tess on Mrs. Eland had, somehow,
+made trouble. "How'd I know that Lem&mdash;Lemon Aden's brother was Mrs.
+Eland's father? He might have been her uncle."</p>
+
+<p>They had to laugh at Dot's vehement defense; but Mr. Bob Buckham went
+on: "My fault, I tell ye&mdash;my fault. But I believe it's going to be all
+cleared up."</p>
+
+<p>"How?" asked Agnes, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"And will my Mrs. Eland feel better in her mind?" Tess asked gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what she will," declared the farmer, vigorously. "She told me
+about the old papers and the book left by her Uncle Lemuel over there to
+the Quoharis poorfarm where he died. I got a letter from her to the
+townfarm keeper, and I drove over and got 'em the other day.</p>
+
+<p>"Like ter not got 'em at all&mdash;old Lem being dead nigh fifteen years now.
+Wal! Marm and me's been looking over that little book. Lem mebbe was a
+leetle crazy&mdash;'specially 'bout money matters, and toward the end of his
+life. You'd think, to read what he'd writ down, that he died possessed
+of a lot of property instead of being town's poor. That was his
+foolishness.</p>
+
+<p>"But 'way back, when he was a much younger man, and his brother Abe got
+scart over a trick he'd played about a horse trade and went West (the
+man who was tricked threatened to do him bodily harm), what old Lem
+wrote in that old diary was easy enough understood.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>
+"There's some letters from Abe, too. Put two and two together,"
+concluded Mr. Buckham, "and it's easy to see where my pap's five hundred
+dollars went to. It was left by Abe all right in Lem's hands; but it
+stuck to them hands!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" cried Agnes, "what a wicked man that Lemuel Aden must have been."</p>
+
+<p>"Nateral born miser. Hated ter give up a penny he didn't hafter give up.
+But them two women&mdash;wonderful how they come together after all these
+years&mdash;them two women needn't worry their souls no longer about that
+five hundred dollars. I never heard as folks could be held accountable
+for their uncle's sins."</p>
+
+<p>That was the way the old farmer made Mrs. Eland see it, too. After all,
+she could only be grateful to the two smallest Corner House girls for
+bringing her and her sister together.</p>
+
+<p>"If I had not taught Tess the old rhyme:</p>
+
+<div class="poemblock">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="io">"'First William, the Norman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then William, the son,'"<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">the matron of the Women's and Children's Hospital declared, "and Tess
+had not recited it in school, Teeny, you would never have remembered it
+and felt the strange drawing toward me that you did feel."</p>
+
+<p>"And if you hadn't met that child, I have an idea that you'd have lost
+your position at this hospital&mdash;and then where'd we be?" said the
+convalescent Miss Pepperill, sitting propped up in her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span> chair in the
+matron's room at the institution in question. "That child, Tess,
+certainly started all the interest now being shown in this hospital."</p>
+
+<p>That Monday night was the first public presentation of the play for the
+benefit of the hospital. Few were more anxious or more excited before
+the curtain went up, for the success of <em>The Carnation Countess</em>, than
+the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil; but there was in store for them
+in the immediate future much more excitement than this of performing in
+the play, all of which will be narrated in the next volume of the
+series, to be entitled, "The Corner House Girls' Odd Find: Where They
+Made It; and What the Strange Discovery Led To."</p>
+
+<p>Ruth Kenway felt a share of responsibility for the success of the play,
+as she naturally would for any matter in which she had even the smallest
+part. It was Ruth's way to be "cumbered by many cares." Mr. Howbridge
+sometimes jokingly called her "Martha."</p>
+
+<p>Dot was only desirous of singing her "bee" song with the other children,
+and then hurrying home where she might continue her work on a wonderful
+Christmas outfit for her Alice-doll. Alice was to have a "coming out
+party" during the holiday week, and positively <em>had</em> to have some new
+clothes. Besides, <em>The Carnation Countess</em> had become rather a stale
+affair for the smallest Corner House girl by this time.</p>
+
+<p>Tess seriously hoped she would do nothing in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span> her part of Swiftwing, the
+hummingbird, to detract from the performance. Tess did not take herself
+at all seriously as an actor; she only desired&mdash;as she always did&mdash;to do
+what she had to do, right.</p>
+
+<p>As for Agnes, she was truly filled with delight. The fly-away's very
+heart and soul was in the character she played. She lived the part of
+Innocent Delight.</p>
+
+<p><a name="frontis2" id="frontis2"></a>She truly did well in this first performance. No stage fright did she
+experience. From her first word spoken in the centre of the stage while
+Madam Shaw was being borne in by the Sedan men, till the last word she
+spoke in the final act of the play, Agnes Kenway acted her part with
+credit.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, as a whole, the Milton school pupils did well in the play. The
+professor's fears were not fulfilled. Milton people did not by any
+means, laugh the actors out of town.</p>
+
+<p>Instead, the packed house of the first night was repeated on the second
+evening. The matin&eacute;e on the third day, which was given at popular
+prices, was overcrowded&mdash;they had to stop selling admission tickets.
+While the third and last evening saw a repetition of the crowds at the
+other performances.</p>
+
+<p>The local papers gave much space each day to the benefit, and their
+criticisms of the amateur players made the hearts of boys and girls
+alike, glad.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span>
+The reports from the ticket office were, after all, the main thing. It
+was soon seen that a goodly sum would be made for the Women's and
+Children's Hospital. In the end it amounted to more than three thousand
+dollars.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, <em>that</em> will give the hospital a new lease of life! Dr. Forsyth
+said so," Agnes declared at the dinner table the day after the last
+performance.</p>
+
+<p>"It will pay Mrs. Eland's salary for a long time," Tess remarked, with a
+sigh of satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know but that sounds rather selfish, after all, dear," Ruth
+said, smiling at sober little Tess.</p>
+
+<p>"What does, Sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"It seems that all <em>you</em> care about the hospital is that Mrs. Eland
+shall get her wages."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I s'pose that's my special interest in it," admitted Tess, slowly.
+"But then, if my Mrs. Eland is there as matron, the hospital is bound to
+do a great deal of good."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! wisdom of the ancients!" laughed Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite true, my dear," commented Mrs. MacCall. "Your Mrs. Eland is a
+fine woman. I've always said that."</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody doesn't agree with you," said Ruth, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Who doesn't like Mrs. Eland?" demanded Tess, quite excited.</p>
+
+<p>"Our neighbor, Sammy Pinkney," Ruth replied, laughing again. "I heard
+him talking about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span> her this very morning, and what he said was not
+complimentary."</p>
+
+<p>Tess was quite flushed. "Sammy gave us Billy Bumps," she said sternly,
+"and Billy is a very good goat."</p>
+
+<p>"Except when he eats up poor Seneca Sprague's hair," chuckled Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a <em>very</em> good goat," repeated Tess. "But if Sammy says my Mrs.
+Eland isn't the very nicest lady there is&mdash;well&mdash;he can take his old
+goat back&mdash;so now!"</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say, Ruthie?" asked Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard him say that if Mrs. Eland nursed Miss Pepperill so well that
+she could come back to teach school, when he got to be a pirate he would
+sail 'way off with Mrs. Eland somewhere and make her walk the plank!"</p>
+
+<p>"If he does such a thing," cried Dot, excitedly, "he <em>can</em> take back his
+old goat! You know, I don't believe Mrs. Eland could walk a plank,
+anyway. She isn't an acrobat, like Neale."</p>
+
+<p>"If Sammy Pinkney tries to be a pirate, and carries my Mrs. Eland off in
+any such horrid way," declared Tess with much energy for her, "I hope
+his mother spanks him good!"</p>
+
+<p>And with the hilarious laughter that welcomed this speech from
+Swiftwing, the hummingbird, let us bid farewell to our four Corner House
+girls.</p>
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<div id="box2">
+<h3>CHARMING STORIES FOR GIRLS<br />
+<span class="small">From eight to twelve years old</span></h3>
+
+<h2>THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS SERIES<br />
+
+<span class="small">BY GRACE BROOKS HILL.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 120px;">
+<img src="images/advert.jpg" width="120" height="167" alt="Book cover" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Four girls from eight to fourteen years of age receive word that a rich
+bachelor uncle has died, leaving them the old Corner House he occupied.
+They move into it and then the fun begins. What they find and do will
+provoke many a hearty laugh. Later, they enter school and make many
+friends. One of these invites the girls to spend a few weeks at a
+bungalow owned by her parents and the adventures they meet with make
+very interesting reading. Clean, wholesome stories of humor and
+adventure, sure to appeal to all young girls.</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>1 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS.</li>
+
+<li>2 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL.</li>
+
+<li>3 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS UNDER CANVAS.</li>
+
+<li>4 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY.</li>
+
+<li>5 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS' ODD FIND.</li>
+
+<li>6 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS ON A TOUR.</li>
+
+<li>7 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS GROWING UP.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p class="center">(Other volumes in preparation)</p>
+
+<p class="center"><em>Cloth, Large 12mo., Illustrated, Per vol. 75 cents</em></p>
+
+<p class="center">For sale at all bookstores or sent (postage paid) on receipt of price by
+the publishers.</p>
+
+<hr class="hrad3" />
+
+<h3>BARSE &amp; HOPKINS<br /><br />
+<span class="ws">Publishers 28</span> West 23rd <span class="ws">Street New</span> <span class="small">York</span></h3>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 538px;">
+<img src="images/endpaper.jpg" width="538" height="400" alt="Endpaper" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+<div class="tn">
+<h4>Transcriber's Note:</h4>
+
+<p class="noi"><strong>Page&thinsp;&nbsp; 10</strong>
+Hyphen removed from <a href="#bespectacled">bespectacled</a></p>
+
+<p class="noi"><strong>Page&thinsp;&nbsp; 40</strong>
+ Bump's changed to <a href="#Bumps">Bumps'</a></p>
+
+<p class="noi"><strong>Page&thinsp;&nbsp; 44</strong>
+ Eve changed to <a href="#Eva">Eva</a></p>
+
+<p class="noi"><strong>Page 116</strong>
+ Closing double quotation mark removed from <a href="#tater">'tater!'</a></p>
+
+<p class="noi"><strong>Page 129</strong>
+ Retained the spelling of <a href="#barries">barries</a></p>
+
+<p class="noi"><strong>Page 148</strong>
+ The word "in" removed from between <a href="#in">Also the</a></p>
+
+<p class="noi"><strong>Page 193</strong>
+ Changed bady to <a href="#badly">badly</a></p>
+
+<p class="noi"><strong>Page 236</strong>
+ Changed strongs to <a href="#strong">strong</a></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Corner House Girls in a Play, by 
+Grace Brooks Hill and R. Emmett Owen
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Corner House Girls in a Play, by
+Grace Brooks Hill and R. Emmett Owen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: The Corner House Girls in a Play
+       How they rehearsed, how they acted, and what the play brought in
+
+Author: Grace Brooks Hill
+        R. Emmett Owen
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2010 [EBook #31722]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: She truly did well in this performance. (Page 252)
+_Frontispiece_]
+
+
+
+
+    THE
+    CORNER HOUSE GIRLS
+    IN A PLAY
+
+    HOW THEY REHEARSED
+    HOW THEY ACTED
+    AND WHAT THE PLAY BROUGHT IN
+
+    BY
+    GRACE BROOKS HILL
+    AUTHOR OF "THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS," "THE CORNER
+    HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL," ETC.
+
+    _ILLUSTRATED BY
+    R. EMMETT OWEN_
+
+    NEW YORK
+    BARSE & HOPKINS
+    PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+    BOOKS FOR GIRLS
+
+    The Corner House Girls Series
+    By Grace Brooks Hill
+
+    _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume,
+    75 cents, postpaid._
+
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS UNDER CANVAS
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS' ODD FIND
+    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS ON A TOUR
+
+    (_Other volumes in preparation_)
+
+    BARSE & HOPKINS
+
+    PUBLISHERS      NEW YORK
+
+    Copyright, 1916,
+    by
+    Barse & Hopkins
+
+    _The Corner House Girls in a Play_
+
+    VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
+    BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                 PAGE
+
+        I THE SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND                            9
+
+       II THE LADY IN THE GRAY CLOAK                          18
+
+      III BILLY BUMPS' BANQUET                                27
+
+       IV THE BASKET BALL TEAM IN TROUBLE                     42
+
+        V THE STONE IN THE POOL                               57
+
+       VI JUST OUT OF REACH                                   66
+
+      VII THE CORE OF THE APPLE                               75
+
+     VIII LYCURGUS BILLET'S EAGLE BAIT                        84
+
+       IX BOB BUCKHAM TAKES A HAND                           101
+
+        X SOMETHING ABOUT OLD TIMES                          112
+
+       XI THE STRAWBERRY MARK                                122
+
+      XII TEA WITH MRS. ELAND                                134
+
+     XIII NEALE SUFFERS A SHORTENING PROCESS                 145
+
+      XIV THE FIRST REHEARSAL                                156
+
+       XV THE HALLOWE'EN PARTY                               167
+
+      XVI THE FIVE-DOLLAR GOLD PIECE                         175
+
+     XVII THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER                              184
+
+    XVIII MISS PEPPERILL AND THE GRAY LADY                   193
+
+      XIX A THANKSGIVING SKATING PARTY                       198
+
+       XX NEALE'S ENDLESS CHAIN                              206
+
+      XXI THE CORNER HOUSE THANKSGIVING                      212
+
+     XXII CLOUDS AND SUNSHINE                                217
+
+    XXIII SWIFTWING, THE HUMMINGBIRD                         228
+
+     XXIV THE FINAL REHEARSAL                                240
+
+      XXV A GREAT SUCCESS                                    247
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                            PAGE
+
+    She truly did well in this performance        _Frontispiece_
+
+    At the moment the eagle dropped with spread talons,
+    the big dog leaped                                       103
+
+    They saw two huge pumpkin lanterns grinning a
+    welcome from the gateposts                               173
+
+    The scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward
+    through the drop                                         238
+
+
+
+
+THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND
+
+
+"I never can learn them in the wide, wide world! I just know I never
+can, Dot!"
+
+"Dear me! I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," responded Dorothy
+Kenway--only nobody ever called her by her full name, for she really was
+too small to achieve the dignity of anything longer than "Dot."
+
+"I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," she repeated, hugging the
+Alice-doll a little closer and wrapping the lace "throw" carefully about
+the shoulders of her favorite child. The Alice-doll had never enjoyed
+robust health since her awful experience of more than a year before,
+when she had been buried alive.
+
+Of course, Dot had not got as far in school as the sovereigns of
+England. She had not as yet heard very much about the history of her own
+country. She knew, of course, that Columbus discovered it, the Pilgrims
+settled it, that George Washington was the father of it, and Abraham
+Lincoln saved it.
+
+Tess Kenway was usually very quick in her books, and she was now
+prepared to enter a class in the lower grammar grade of the Milton
+school in which she would have easy lessons in English history. She had
+just purchased the history on High Street, for school would open for the
+autumn term in a few days.
+
+Mr. Englehart, one of the School Board and an influential citizen of
+Milton, had a penchant for beginning at the beginning of things. As he
+put it: "How can our children be grounded well in the history of our own
+country if they are not informed upon the salient points of English
+history--the Mother Country, from whom we obtained our first laws, and
+from whom came our early leaders?"
+
+As the two youngest Kenway girls came out of the stationery and book
+store, Miss Pepperill was entering. Tess and Dot had met Miss Pepperill
+at church the Sunday previous, and Tess knew that the rather
+sharp-featured, bespectacled lady was to be her new teacher.
+
+The girls whom Tess knew, who had already had experience with Miss
+Pepperill called her "Pepperpot." She was supposed to be very irritable,
+and she _did_ have red hair. She shot questions out at one in a most
+disconcerting way, and Dot was quite amazed and startled by the way Miss
+Pepperill pounced on Tess.
+
+"Let's see your book, child," Miss Pepperill said, seizing Tess' recent
+purchase. "Ah--yes. So you are to be in my room, are you?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," admitted Tess, timidly.
+
+"Ah--yes! What is the succession of the sovereigns of England? Name
+them!"
+
+Now, if Miss Pepperill had demanded that Tess Kenway name the Pleiades,
+the latter would have been no more startled--or no less able to reply
+intelligently.
+
+"Ah--yes!" snapped Miss Pepperill, seeing Tess' vacuous expression. "I
+shall ask you that the first day you are in my room. Be prepared to
+answer it. The succession of the sovereigns of England," and she swept
+on into the store, leaving the children on the sidewalk, wonderfully
+impressed.
+
+They had walked over into the Parade Ground, and seated themselves on
+one of the park benches in sight of the old Corner House, as Milton
+people had called the Stower homestead, on the corner of Willow Street,
+from time immemorial. Tess' hopeless announcement followed their sitting
+on the bench for at least half an hour.
+
+"Why, I can't never!" she sighed, making it positive by at least two
+negatives. "I never had an idea England had such an awful long string of
+kings. It's worse than the list of Presidents of the United States."
+
+"Is it?" Dot observed, curiously. "It must be awful annoyable to have to
+learn 'em."
+
+"Goodness, Dot! There you go again with one of your big words,"
+exclaimed Tess, in vexation. "Who ever heard of 'annoyable' before? You
+must have invented that."
+
+Dot calmly ignored the criticism. It must be confessed that she loved
+the sound of long words, and sometimes, as Agnes said, "made an awful
+mess of polysyllables." Agnes was the Kenway next older than Tess, while
+Ruth was seventeen, the oldest of all, and had for more than three years
+been the house-mother of the Kenway family.
+
+Ruth and Agnes were at home in the old Corner House at this very hour.
+There lived in the big dwelling, with the four Corner House Girls, Aunt
+Sarah Maltby (who really was no relative of the girls, but a partial
+charge upon their charity), Mrs. MacCall, their housekeeper, and old
+Uncle Rufus, Uncle Peter Stower's black butler and general factotum, who
+had been left to the care of the old man's heirs when he died.
+
+The first volume of this series, called "The Corner House Girls," told
+the story of the coming of the four sisters and Aunt Sarah Maltby to the
+Stower homestead, and of their first adventures in Milton--getting
+settled in their new home and making friends among their neighbors.
+
+In "The Corner House Girls at School," the second volume, the four
+Kenway sisters extended the field of their acquaintance in Milton and
+thereabout, entered the local schools in the several grades to which
+they were assigned, made more friends and found some few rivals. They
+began to feel, too, that responsibility which comes with improved
+fortunes, for Uncle Peter Stower had left a considerable estate to the
+four girls, of which Mr. Howbridge, the lawyer, was administrator as
+well as the girls' guardian.
+
+Now the second summer of their sojourn at the old Corner House was just
+ending, and the girls had but recently returned from a most delightful
+outing at Pleasant Cove, on the Atlantic Coast, some distance away from
+Milton, which was an inland town.
+
+All the fun and adventure of that vacation are related in "The Corner
+House Girls Under Canvas," the third volume of the series, and the one
+immediately preceding the present story.
+
+Tess was seldom vindictive; but after she had puzzled her poor brain for
+this half hour, trying to pick out and to get straight the Williams and
+Stephens and Henrys and Johns and Edwards and Richards, to say nothing
+of the Georges, who had reigned over England, she was quite flushed and
+excited.
+
+"I know I'm just going to de-_test_ that Miss Pepperpot!" she exclaimed.
+"I--I could throw this old history at her--I just could!"
+
+"But you couldn't hit her, Tess," Dot observed placidly. "You know you
+couldn't."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you can't throw anything straight--no straighter than Sammy
+Pinkney's ma. I heard her scolding Sammy the other day for throwing
+stones. She says, 'Sammy, don't you let me catch you throwing any more
+stones.'"
+
+"And did he mind her?" asked Tess.
+
+"I don't know," Dot replied reflectively. "But he says to her: 'What'll
+I do if the other fellers throw 'em at me?' 'Just you come and tell me,
+Sammy, if they do,' says Mrs. Pinkney."
+
+"Well?" queried Tess, as her sister seemed inclined to stop.
+
+"I didn't see what good that would do, myself," confessed Dot. "Telling
+Mrs. Pinkney, I mean. And Sammy says to her: 'What's the use of telling
+you, Ma? You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!' _I_ don't think
+_you_ could fling that hist'ry straight at Miss Pepperpot, Tess."
+
+"Huh!" said Tess, not altogether pleased. "I _feel_ I could hit her,
+anyway."
+
+"Maybe Aggie could learn you the names of those sov-runs----"
+
+"'Sovereigns'!" exclaimed Tess. "For pity's sake, get the word right,
+child!"
+
+Dot pouted and Tess, being in a somewhat nagging mood--which was
+entirely strange for her--continued:
+
+"And don't say 'learn' for 'teach.' How many times has Ruthie told you
+that?"
+
+"I don't care," retorted Dorothy Kenway. "I don't think so much of the
+English language--or the English sov-er-reigns--so now! If folks can
+talk, and make themselves understood, isn't that enough?"
+
+"It doesn't seem so," sighed Tess, despondent again as she glanced at
+the open history.
+
+"Oh, I tell you what!" cried Dot, suddenly eager. "You ask Neale O'Neil.
+I'm sure _he_ can help you. He teached me how to play jack-stones."
+
+Tess ignored this flagrant lapse from school English, and said, rather
+haughtily:
+
+"I wouldn't ask a boy."
+
+"Oh, my! _I_ would," Dot replied, her eyes big and round. "I'd ask
+anybody if I wanted to know anything very bad. And Neale O'Neil's quite
+the nicest boy that ever was. Aggie says so."
+
+"Ruth and I don't approve of boys," Tess said loftily. "And I don't
+believe Neale knows the sovereigns of England. Oh! look at those men,
+Dot!"
+
+Dot squirmed about on the bench to look out on Parade Street. An
+erecting gang of the telegraph company was putting up a pole. The deep
+hole had been dug for it beside the old pole, and the men, with spikes
+in their hands, were beginning to raise the new pole from the ground.
+
+Two men at either side had hold of ropes to steady the big pine stick.
+Up it went, higher and higher, while the overseer stood at the butt to
+guide it into the hole dug in the sidewalk.
+
+Just as the pole was about half raised into its place, and a lineman had
+gone quickly up a neighboring pole to fasten a guy-wire to hold it, the
+interested children on the park bench saw a woman crossing the street
+near the scene of the telegraph company men's activities.
+
+"Oh, Tess!" Dot exclaimed. "What a funny dress she wears!"
+
+"Yes," said the older Kenway girl, eying the woman quite as curiously as
+her sister.
+
+The strange woman wore a long, gray cloak, and a little gray, close
+bonnet, with a stiff, white frill framing her face. That face was very
+sweet, but rather sad of expression. The children could not see her hair
+and had no means of guessing her age, for her cheeks were healthily pink
+and her gray eyes bright.
+
+These facts Tess and Dot observed and digested in their small minds
+before the woman reached the curb.
+
+"Isn't she pretty?" whispered Tess.
+
+Before Dot could reply there sounded a wild cry from the man on the
+pole. The guy-wire had slipped.
+
+"'Ware below!" he shouted.
+
+The woman did not notice. Perhaps the close cap she wore kept her from
+hearing distinctly. The writhing wire flew through the air like a great
+snake.
+
+Tess dropped her history and sprang up; but Dot did not loose her hold
+upon the rather battered "Alice-doll" which was her dearest possession.
+She clung, indeed, to the doll all the closer, but she screamed to the
+woman quite as loudly as Tess did, and her little blue-stockinged legs
+twinkled across the grass to the point of danger, quite as rapidly as
+did Tess' brown ones.
+
+"Oh, lady! lady!" shrieked Tess. "You'll be killed!"
+
+"Please come away from there--_please_!" cried Dot.
+
+Their voices pierced to the strange lady's ears. Just as the pole began
+to waver and sink sidewise, despite the efforts of the men with the
+spikes, she looked up, saw the gesticulating children, observed the
+shadow of the pole and the writhing wire, and sprang upon the walk, and
+across it in time to escape the peril.
+
+The wire's weight brought the pole down with a crash, in spite of all
+the men could do. But the woman in the gray cloak was safe with Tess and
+Dot on the greensward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE LADY IN THE GRAY CLOAK
+
+
+"My dear girls!" the woman in the gray cloak said, with a hand on a
+shoulder of each of the younger Corner House girls, "how providential it
+was that you saw my danger. I am very much obliged to you. And how brave
+you both were!"
+
+"Thank you, ma'am," said Tess, who seldom forgot her manners.
+
+But Dot was greatly excited. "Oh, my!" she gasped, clinging tightly to
+the Alice-doll, and quite breathless. "My--my pulse _did_ jump so!"
+
+"Did it? You funny little thing," said the woman, half laughing and half
+crying. "What do you know about a pulse?"
+
+"Oh, I know it's a muscle that bumps up and down, and the doctor feels
+it to see if you're better next time he comes," blurted out Dot, nothing
+loath to show what knowledge she thought she possessed.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" cried the lady, laughing heartily now. And, dropping down
+upon the very bench where Tess and Dot had been sitting, she drew the
+two children to seats beside her. "Oh, my dear! I shall have to tell
+that to Dr. Forsyth."
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated Tess, who was looking at the pink-cheeked lady with
+admiring eyes. "Oh! _we_ know Dr. Forsyth. He is our doctor."
+
+"Is he, indeed? And who are you?" responded the lady, the sad look on
+her face quite disappearing now that she talked so animatedly with the
+little Kenways.
+
+"We are Dot and Tess Kenway," said Tess. "I'm Tess. We live just over
+there," and she pointed to the big, old-fashioned mansion across the
+Parade Ground.
+
+"Ah, then," said the woman in the gray cloak, "you are the Corner House
+girls. I have heard of you."
+
+"We are only two of them," said Dot, quickly. "There's four."
+
+"Ah! then you are only half the quartette."
+
+"I don't believe we are _half_--do you, Tess?" said Dot, seriously. "You
+see," she added to the lady, "Ruthie and Aggie are so much bigger than
+we are."
+
+The lady in the gray cloak laughed again. "You are all four of equal
+importance, I have no doubt. And you must be very happy together--you
+sisters." The sad look returned to her face. "It must be lovely to have
+three sisters."
+
+"Didn't you ever have any at all?" asked Dot, sympathetically.
+
+"I had a sister once--one very dear sister," said the lady,
+thoughtfully, and looking away across the Parade Ground.
+
+Tess and Dot gazed at each other questioningly; then Tess ventured to
+ask:
+
+"Did she die?"
+
+"I don't know," was the sad reply. "We were separated when we were very
+young. I can just remember my sister, for we were both little girls in
+pinafores. I loved my sister very much, and I am sure she loved me, and,
+if she is alive, misses me quite as much as I do her."
+
+"Oh, how sad that is!" murmured Tess. "I hope you will find her, ma'am."
+
+"Not to be thought of in this big world--not to be thought of now,"
+repeated the lady, more briskly. She picked up the history that Tess had
+dropped. "And which of you little tots studies this? Isn't English
+history rather far advanced for you?"
+
+"Tess is _nawful_ smart," Dot hastened to say. "Miss Andrews says so,
+though she's a nawful strict teacher, too. Isn't she, Tess?"
+
+Her sister nodded soberly. Her mind reverted at once to the sovereigns
+of England and Miss Pepperill. "I--I'm afraid I'm not very quick to
+learn, after all. Miss Pepperill will think me an awful dunce when I
+can't learn the sovereigns."
+
+"The sovereigns?" repeated the woman in gray, with interest. "What
+sovereigns?"
+
+So Tess (of course, with Dot's valuable help) explained her difficulty,
+and all about the new teacher Tess expected to have.
+
+"And she'll think I'm awfully dull," repeated Tess, sadly. "I just
+_can't_ make my mind remember the succession of those kings and queens.
+It's the hardest thing I ever tried to learn. Do you s'pose all English
+children have to learn it?"
+
+"I know they have an easy way of committing to memory the succession of
+their sovereigns, from William the Conqueror, down to the present time,"
+said the lady, thoughtfully. "Or, they used to have."
+
+"Oh, dear me!" wailed Tess. "I wish I knew how to remember the old
+things. But I don't."
+
+"Suppose I teach you the rhyme I learned when I was a very little girl
+at school?"
+
+"Oh, would you?" cried Tess, her pretty face lighting up as she gazed
+admiringly again at the woman in the gray cloak.
+
+"Yes. And we will add a couplet or two at the end to bring the list down
+to date--for there have been two more sovereigns since the good Queen
+Victoria passed away. Now attend! Here is the rhyme. I will recite it
+for you, and then I will write it down and you may learn it at your
+leisure."
+
+Both Tess and Dot--and of course the Alice-doll--were very attentive as
+the lady recited:
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+        Then William, his son;
+      Henry, Stephen, and Henry,
+        Then Richard and John;
+      Next Henry the Third;
+        Edwards one, two, and three,
+      And again after Richard
+        Three Henrys we see;
+      Two Edwards, third Richard,
+        If rightly I guess,
+      Two Henrys, sixth Edward,
+        Queen Mary, Queen Bess,
+      Then Jamie, the Scotchman,
+        Then Charles, whom they slew,
+      Yet received after Cromwell
+        Another Charles, too;
+      Next James the Second
+        Ascended the throne;
+      Then good William and Mary
+        Together came on;
+      Till Anne, Georges four,
+        And fourth William, all past,
+      God sent Queen Victoria,
+        Who long was the last;
+      Then Edward, the Seventh
+        But shortly did reign,
+      With George, the Fifth,
+        England's present sovereign.'
+
+There you have it--with an original four lines at the end to complete
+the list," laughed the lady.
+
+Dot's eyes were big; she had lost the sense of the rhyme long before;
+but Tess was very earnest. "I--I believe I _could_ learn 'em that way,"
+she confessed. "I can remember poetry quite well. Can't I, Dot?"
+
+"You recite 'Little Drops of Water, Little Grains of Sand' beautifully,"
+said the smallest Corner House girl, loyally.
+
+"Of course you can learn it," said the lady, confidently. "Now,
+Tess--is that your name--Theresa?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am--only almost nobody ever calls me by it _all_. Miss Andrews
+used to when she was very, very angry. But I hope my new teacher, Miss
+Pepperill, won't be angry with me at all--if I can only learn these
+sovereigns."
+
+"You shall," declared the lady in gray. "I have a pencil here in my bag.
+And here is a piece of paper. I will write it all out for you and you
+can study it from now until the day school opens. Then, when this Miss
+Pepperill demands it, you will have it pat--right on the end of your
+tongue."
+
+"I hope so," said Tess, with dawning cheerfulness.
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+      Then William, his son;'
+
+I believe I _can_ learn to recite it all if you are kind enough to write
+it down."
+
+The lady did so, writing the lines in a beautiful, round hand, and so
+plain that even Dot, who was a trifle "weak" in reading anything but
+print, could quite easily spell out the words.
+
+"Weren't there any more names for kings when those lived?" the youngest
+Kenway asked seriously.
+
+"Why, what makes you ask that?" asked the smiling lady.
+
+"Maybe there weren't enough to go 'round," continued the puzzled Dot.
+"There are so many of 'em of one name----Williams, and Georges, and
+Edwardses. Don't English people have any more names to give to their
+sov-runs?"
+
+"Sov-er-eigns," whispered Tess, sharply.
+
+"That's what I mean," said the placid Dot. "The lady knows what I mean."
+
+"Of course I do, dear," agreed the woman in the gray cloak. "But I
+expect the mothers of kings, like the mothers of other little boys, like
+to name their sons after their fathers.
+
+"Now, children, I must go," she added briskly, getting up off the bench
+and handing Tess the written paper. "Good-bye. I hope I shall meet you
+both again very soon. Let me kiss you, Tess--and you, Dorothy Kenway. It
+has done me good to know you."
+
+She kissed both children quickly, and then set off along the Parade
+Ground walk. Tess and Dot bade her good-bye shrilly, turning themselves
+toward the old Corner House.
+
+"Oh, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, suddenly.
+
+"What's the matter now?" asked Dot.
+
+"We never asked the lady her name--or who she was."
+
+"We-ell----would that be perlite?" asked Dot, doubtfully.
+
+"Yes. She asked our names. We don't know anything about her--and I _do_
+think she is so nice!"
+
+"So do I," agreed Dot. "And that gray cloak----"
+
+"With the pretty little bonnet and ruche," added Tess.
+
+"She isn't the Salvation Army," said Dot, remembering that that order
+was uniformed from seeing them on the streets of Bloomingsburg, where
+the Kenways had lived before they had fallen heir to Uncle Peter
+Stower's estate.
+
+"Of course not!" Tess cried. "And she don't look like one o' those
+deaconesses that came to see Ethel Mumford's mother when she was
+sick--do you remember?"
+
+"Of course I remember--everything!" said the positive Dot. "Wasn't I a
+great, big girl when we came to Milton to live?"
+
+"Why--why," stammered her sister, not wishing to displease Dot, but
+bound to be honest. "You aren't a very big girl, even now, Dot Kenway."
+
+"Humph!" exclaimed Dot, quite vexed. "I wear bigger shoes and stockings,
+and Ruth is having Miss Ann Titus let down the hems of all my old
+dresses a full inch--so now!"
+
+"I expect you _have_ grown some, Dot," admitted Tess, reflectively. "But
+you aren't big enough even now to brag about."
+
+The youngest Kenway might have been deeply offended by this--and shown
+that she had taken offence, too--had something new not taken her
+attention at the very moment she and Tess were entering the side gate of
+the old Corner House premises.
+
+The house was a three story and attic mansion which was set well back
+from Main Street, but the side of which was separated from Willow Street
+by only a narrow strip of sward. The kitchen was in the wing nearest
+this last-named street, and there was a big, half-enclosed side porch,
+to which the woodshed was attached, and beyond which was the long grape
+arbor.
+
+The length of the old Corner House yard, running parallel with Willow
+Street, was much greater than its width. The garden, summer house,
+henhouses, and other outbuildings were at the back. The lawn in front
+was well shaded, and there were plenty of fruit trees around the house.
+Not many dwellings in Milton had as much yard-room as the Stower
+homestead.
+
+"Oh my, Tess!" gasped Dot, with deep interest, staring at the porch
+stoop. "Who is that--and what's he doing?"
+
+"Dear me!" returned Tess, hesitating at the gate. "That's Seneca
+Sprague--the man who wears a linen duster and straw hat all the year
+round, and 'most always goes barefooted. He--he isn't just right, they
+say, Dot."
+
+"Just right about what?" asked Dot.
+
+"Mercy me, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, exasperated.
+
+"Well, what _is_ he?" asked Dot, with vigor.
+
+"Well--I guess," said Tess, "that he thinks he is a minister. And, I do
+declare, I believe he's preaching to Sandyface and her kittens! Listen,
+Dot!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BILLY BUMPS' BANQUET
+
+
+Almost the first thing that would have caught the attention of the
+visitor to the old Corner House at almost any time, was the number of
+pets that hovered about that kitchen porch. Ruth, with a sigh, sometimes
+admitted that she was afraid she supported a menagerie.
+
+Just at this hour--it was approaching noon--Mrs. MacCall, or the girl
+who helped her in the kitchen, might be expected to appear at the door
+with a plate of scraps or vegetable peelings or a little spare milk or
+other delicacy to tempt the appetites of the dumb creatures that
+subsisted upon the kindness of the Corner House family.
+
+The birds, of course, got their share. In the winter the old Corner
+House was the rendezvous of a chattering throng of snow-buntings and
+sparrows and starlings, for the children tied suet and meat-bones to the
+branches of the fruit trees, as well as scattered crumbs upon the
+snow-crust. In summer the feathered beggars took toll as they pleased of
+the cherries and small fruits in the garden.
+
+In the garden, too, was the only martin house in town, set upon a tall
+pole. There every spring a battle royal went on between the coming
+martins and the impudent sparrows, as the latter horde always
+appropriated the martin house during the absence of its proper owners in
+the South. Each cherry tree had its robin's nest--sometimes two. Mr.
+Robin likes to be near the supply of his favorite fruit. The wrens built
+under the eaves of the porch, and above the windows, in sheltered
+places. All the pigeons in the neighborhood flew here to strut and coo,
+and help eat any grain that might be thrown out.
+
+What one saw now, waiting at the porch steps, was principally a family
+of cats. There were no less than nine posing expectantly before the
+queer looking character known to Milton folks as Seneca Sprague.
+
+First of all, Sandyface, the speckled tabby-cat, sat placidly washing
+her face on the lower step. Close at her back, on the ground--one was
+even playing with its mother's steadily waving tail--was Sandyface's
+latest family, the four kittens bearing the remarkable names of
+Starboard, Port, Hard-a-lee and Mainsheet.
+
+Grouped farther away from the mother cat were the four well-grown young
+cats, Spotty, Almira, Popocatepetl and Bungle.
+
+Much farther in the background, and in the attitude of sleep, with his
+head on his forepaws, but with a blinking eye that lost nothing of what
+went on at the porch (for Mrs. MacCall might appear at any moment with
+his own particular dish) lay a big Newfoundland dog, with a noble head,
+intelligent brown eyes, and a muzzle now graying with age. This was the
+Corner House girls' newest and most valued pet, Tom Jonah.
+
+In addition, on the clothes-drying green, was Billy Bumps. This
+suggestively named individual was a sturdy, wise-looking goat, with a
+face and chin-whisker which Mrs. MacCall declared was "as long as the
+moral law," and whose proclivity to eat anything that could be
+masticated was well-known to the Kenway children.
+
+This collection of dumb pets the tall, lank, barefooted man in the
+broken straw hat and linen duster, now faced with a serious mien as
+though he were a real preacher and addressed a human congregation.
+
+Seneca Sprague was a harmless person, considered "not quite right," as
+Tess had said, by his fellow-townsmen. Whether his oddities arose from a
+distraught mind, or an indulgence in a love of publicity, it would be
+hard to say.
+
+His sharp-featured face and long, luxurious iron-gray hair, which he
+sometimes wore knotted up like a woman's, marked him wherever he went.
+Even those who thought him the possessor of a mind diseased agreed that
+he was quite harmless.
+
+He came and went as he pleased, often preaching on street corners a
+doctrine which included a belief in George Washington as a supernatural
+being; and he was patriotic to the core.
+
+Sometimes bad boys made fun of him, and followed and pelted him in the
+street; but, of course, the Corner House girls, who were kind to
+everybody and everything, would not have thought of harrying the queer
+old man, or ridiculing him.
+
+Occasionally Seneca Sprague wrote and had printed a tract in which he
+ramblingly expressed his religious and patriotic beliefs, and an edition
+of this tract he was now selling from house to house in Milton. Ruth
+had, of course, purchased one and as Tess and Dot came into the old
+Corner House yard, Mr. Sprague was just turning away from the door, and
+had caught sight of the expectant congregation of pets gathered below
+him.
+
+"Lo, and behold! lo, and behold!" ejaculated Seneca Sprague, in a solemn
+and resonant voice. "What saith the Scriptures? Him that hath ears to
+hear, let him hear."
+
+Every cat's ears were pricked forward expectantly and even Tom Jonah
+lifted his glossy ears--probably hearing Mrs. MacCall's step at the
+kitchen door. Billy Bumps lifted a ruminant head and blatted softly.
+
+"Thus saith the prophet," went on Seneca Sprague, in his sing-song tone.
+"There is yet a little time in which man may repent. Then cometh the
+Crack o' Doom! Beware! beware! beware!"
+
+Here Dot whispered to Tess: "How did Mr. Seneca Sprague come to know so
+much about prophets, and what's going to happen, and all that? And what
+_is_ the Crack o' Doom?"
+
+"Mercy, I don't know, child!" exclaimed Tess. "I'm sure _I_ didn't crack
+it."
+
+The queer old man was interrupted just here, too, by Ruth Kenway's
+reappearance upon the porch. Ruth was a very intelligent looking girl,
+if not exactly a pretty one. She was dark and her hair was black; she
+had warm, brown eyes and a sweet, steady smile that pleased most people.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Sprague!" she said, attracting that queer individual's
+attention. He actually swept off his torn straw hat and bowed before
+her.
+
+Ruth's voice was low and pleasant. Mrs. MacCall said she had an old head
+upon young shoulders. But there had been good reason for the oldest of
+the Corner House girls to show in her look and manner the effect of
+responsibility and burden of forethought beyond her years.
+
+Before the fortune had come to them the little Kenways had had only a
+small pension to exist upon, and they had had to share that with Aunt
+Sarah Maltby. For nearly two years Ruth had taken her mother's place and
+looked after the family.
+
+It had made her seem old beyond her real age; but it had likewise given
+her a confidence in herself which she otherwise would not have had.
+People deferred to Ruth Kenway; even Mr. Howbridge thought she was quite
+a wonderful girl.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Sprague," she said again. "I meant to tell you that you are
+welcome to some of those fall pippins, down there by the hen-run--if
+you care to pick them up. Just help yourself. I know you don't use meat,
+and that you live on fruit and vegetables; and apples are hard to get at
+the store."
+
+"Thank you--thank you," said the strange, old man, politely. "I will
+avail myself of the privilege you so kindly offer. It is true I live on
+the fruits of the earth wholly, for are we not commanded to shed no
+blood--no, not at all? Yea, verily, he who lives by the sword shall die
+by the sword----"
+
+"And I hope you will like the pippins, Mr. Sprague," broke in Ruth,
+knowing how long-winded the old fellow was, and being cumbered by many
+cares herself just then.
+
+"Ah! there you are, children," she added, addressing Tess and Dot. "Come
+right in and make ready for lunch. Don't let us keep Mrs. MacCall
+waiting. She and Linda are preserving to-day and they want to get the
+lunch over and out of the way."
+
+The smaller girls hastened into the house, thus admonished, and up to
+the dressing room connected with the two, big, double bedrooms in the
+other wing, which the four sisters had occupied ever since coming to the
+old Corner House. Ruth went with them to superintend the washing of
+hands and face, smoothing of hair and freshening of frocks and ribbons.
+Ruth had to act as inspector after the youngest Kenway's ablutions,
+Tess declaring: "Dot doesn't always wash into all the corners."
+
+"I do, too, Tess Kenway!" cried the smaller girl. "Ruthie has to watch
+us 'cause _you_ button your apron crooked. You know you do!"
+
+"I don't mean to," said Tess, "but I can't see behind me. I'd like to be
+as neat looking all the time as that lady in the gray cloak. Oh, Ruthie!
+who was she?"
+
+"I have no idea whom you are talking about," said the elder sister,
+curiously. "'The lady in the gray cloak'? What lady in a gray cloak?"
+
+At once Tess and Dot began to explain. They were both eager, they were
+both vociferous; and the particulars of the morning's adventure,
+including the meeting with Miss Pepperill, the falling of the telegraph
+pole, the woman in the gray cloak, and the sovereigns of England, became
+most remarkably mixed in the general relation of facts.
+
+"Mercy! Mercy, children!" cried Ruth, in despair. "Let us go at the
+matter in something like order. Why did the lady in the gray cloak want
+you to learn the succession of the sovereigns of England? And did the
+telegraph pole hit poor Miss Pepperill, or was she merely scared by its
+fall?"
+
+Tess stared at her older sister wonderingly. "Well, I do despair!" she
+breathed at last, repeating one of good Mrs. MacCall's odd exclamations.
+"I never did suppose you could misunderstand a body so, Ruthie Kenway."
+
+Ruth threw back her head at that and laughed heartily. Then she
+endeavored to get at the meat in the nut by asking questions. Soon--by
+the time her little sisters were ready to descend to the dining
+room--Ruth had a fair idea of the happening and the reason for the
+interest Tess and Dot displayed in the identity of the woman in the gray
+cloak.
+
+But Ruth could not help the little ones to discover the name of the
+stranger. They all went down to dinner when Uncle Rufus rang the gong at
+the hall door.
+
+That front hall of the old Corner House was a vast place, with a gallery
+all around it at the level of the second story, out of which opened the
+"grand" bedrooms (only one of which had ever been occupied during the
+girls' occupancy of the house, and that by Aunt Sarah) and it had a
+broad staircase with beautifully carved balustrades.
+
+Uncle Rufus was a tall (though stooped), lean and brown negro, with a
+fringe of snow-white wool around his brown, bald crown. He always
+appeared to serve at table in a long, claw-hammer coat, a white vest and
+trousers, and gray spats. He was the type of old Southern house servant
+one reads about, seldom finds in the North; and he had lived in the old
+Corner House and served Uncle Peter Stower "endurin' of twenty-four
+year," as he often boasted.
+
+Uncle Rufus did much more than serve the table, care for the silver and
+linen, and perform the other duties of a butler. He was Ruth's chief
+assistant in and out of the house. Despite his age, and occasional
+attacks of rheumatism, he was "purty spry yit," according to his own
+statement. And since the Kenway girls had come to the old house, Uncle
+Rufus seemed to have taken a new lease on life.
+
+Aunt Sarah Maltby was already in her place at the table when Ruth and
+the two smaller girls entered the dining room. She was a withered wisp
+of a woman, with bright brown eyes under rather heavy brows. There were
+three deep wrinkles between her eyes; otherwise Aunt Sarah did not show
+in her countenance many of the ravages of time.
+
+Her hair was only a little frosted; she wore it crimped on the sides,
+doing it up carefully in little "pigtails" every night before she
+retired. She was scrupulous in the care of her hands, being one of those
+old ladies who almost never are seen bare-handed--wearing mits or gloves
+on all occasions.
+
+Her plainly made dresses were starched and prim in every particular. She
+was a spinster who never told her age, and defied the public to guess
+it! Living a sort of detached life in the Kenway family, nothing went on
+in domestic affairs of which she was not aware; yet she was seldom
+helpful in any emergency. Usually, if she interfered at all, it was at a
+time when Ruth could have well excused her assistance.
+
+Aunt Sarah had chosen the best bedroom in the house when first they had
+come to Milton to live; and, as well, she had the best there was to be
+had of everything else. She had, all her life, lived selfishly, been
+waited upon, and considered her own comfort first. It was too late now
+for Aunt Sarah to change in many particulars.
+
+Mrs. MacCall bustled in from the kitchen, her face rather red and a
+burned stripe on her forearm which she had floured over to take out the
+smart. "Always get burned when I am driv' like I be to-day," declared
+the housekeeper, whom Ruth insisted should always eat at their table.
+Mrs. MacCall was much more than an ordinary houseworker; she was the
+friend and confidant of the Kenway sisters, and was nearer to all their
+hearts than was stiff and almost wordless Aunt Sarah.
+
+"Do _you_ know who the lady in the gray cloak is?" asked Tess, of Mrs.
+MacCall, having put the question fruitlessly to both Uncle Rufus and
+Aunt Sarah.
+
+"What's that--a conundrum?" asked the housekeeper. "Don't bother me,
+child, with questions to-day. I've got too much on my mind."
+
+"I guess," sighed Tess to Dot, "we never _shall_ find out who she is."
+
+"Don't mind," said the comforting Dorothy. "She gave you the list of
+sov-runs. You've got them, anyhow."
+
+"But I _do_ mind!" declared Tess. "She is just one of the nicest ladies
+I ever met. Of course I want----"
+
+But who is this bursting into the dining room like a young cyclone,
+and late to lunch? "Oh, Agnes! you are late again," said Ruth,
+admonishingly. Aunt Sarah glared at the newcomer, while Mrs.
+MacCall said:
+
+"You come pretty near not getting anything more than cold pieces,
+child."
+
+All their wrath was turned, however, by Agnes' smile--and her beauty.
+Nobody--not even Aunt Sarah Maltby--could retain a scowl and still look
+at Agnes Kenway, plump and pretty, and brown from the sea air and sun.
+Naturally she was light, blue-eyed and with golden-yellow hair. The hair
+was sunburned now and her round cheeks were as brown as fall leaves in
+the woods.
+
+"Oh, dear! I couldn't really help being late," she said, dropping into
+the seat Uncle Rufus pulled out for her. The old darkey began at once
+heaping her plate with tidbits. He all but worshipped Ruth; but Agnes he
+petted and spoiled.
+
+"I couldn't help being late," she repeated. "What do you think, Ruth?
+Eva Larry was just telling me at the front gate that Mr. Marks has
+threatened to forfeit all the basket ball games our team won in the
+half-series last spring against the other teams of the Milton County
+League, and will refuse to let us play the series out this fall. Isn't
+that _awful_?"
+
+"I don't know," said Ruth, placidly; she was not a basket ball
+enthusiast herself. But Agnes had secured a place on the first team of
+the Milton Schools a few weeks before the June closing. She was
+athletic, and, although only in the grammar grade then, was big and
+strong for her age.
+
+"I don't know just how awful it is," repeated the oldest sister. "What
+have you all done that the principal should make that ruling?"
+
+"Goodness knows!" wailed Agnes. "I'm sure _I_ haven't done anything."
+
+"Of course you haven't, Aggie," put in Dot, warmly. "You never _do_!"
+
+This made the family laugh. Dot's loyalty to Agnes was really
+phenomenal. No matter what Agnes did, it must be all right in the little
+one's eyes.
+
+"Well, I don't care," repeated Dot, sturdily, "Agnes is awful good!
+'Course, not the same goodness as Ruthie; but I know she doesn't break
+any school rules. And she knows a lot!"
+
+"I wish she knew who my gray lady is," put in Tess, rather
+complainingly.
+
+"What gray lady?" demanded Agnes, quickly.
+
+Dot, the voluble, got ahead of her sister in this explanation. "She
+isn't the Salvation Army, nor she isn't a deaconess like Mrs. Mumford
+had come to see her; but she's something awfully religious, I know."
+
+Tess managed to tell again about the sovereigns of England, too.
+
+"Oh, I know whom you mean," Agnes said briskly. "I saw her with you up
+on the Parade. Eva Larry told me she was the matron of the Women's and
+Children's Hospital--and they're going to shut it up."
+
+"The child means Mrs. Eland," said Mrs. MacCall, interestedly. "She is a
+splendid woman and that hospital is doing a great work. You don't mean
+they are really going to close it, Agnes?"
+
+"So Eva says. They have to. There are no funds, and two or three rich
+people who used to help them every year have died without leaving the
+hospital any legacy. Mrs. Eland doesn't know what will become of her
+now. She's been matron and acting superintendent ever since the hospital
+was opened, five years ago. Dr. Forsyth is the head visiting physician."
+
+"Mercy, child!" gasped Ruth. "Where _do_ you pick up so much gossip?"
+
+"Eva Larry has been here," said Tess, soberly. "And, you know, she's a
+fluid talker. You said so yourself, Ruthie."
+
+"Fluent! fluent!" gasped Agnes. "And Eva always does have the news."
+
+"She is growing up to be a second Miss Ann Titus," said Ruth drily. "And
+I think Tess got it about right. She _is_ a fluid speaker. When Eva
+talks it is just like opening the spigot and letting the water run."
+
+It was later, after lunch was over, and Tess and Dot had wandered into
+the garden with their dolls. Tess said, reflectively:
+
+"I wish awfully we might help that Mrs. Eland. She's such a lovely lady.
+And I know the sovereigns of England half by heart already."
+
+Dot was usually practical. "Let's gather her some apples and take them
+to her," she suggested.
+
+"We-ell," said Tess, slowly. "That won't keep the hospital going, but
+maybe she likes apples."
+
+"Who doesn't?" demanded Dot, stoutly. "Come on."
+
+When they reached the fall pippin tree which, that year, was loaded with
+golden fruit, the two little girls were quite startled at what they saw.
+
+"O-o-oh!" gasped Dot. "See Billy Bumps!"
+
+"For pity's sake! what's he doing?" rejoined Tess, in amazement.
+
+The old goat had the freedom of the yard, as the garden was shut away
+from him by a strong wire fence. He liked apples himself, did Billy
+Bumps, and perhaps he considered the bagful that Mr. Seneca Sprague had
+picked up and prepared to carry away, a direct poaching upon his
+preserves.
+
+Mr. Sprague had reclined on the soft grass under the wide-spreading tree
+and filled his own stomach to repletion, as could be seen by the cores
+thrown out in a circle about him. Billy Bumps had approached, eyed the
+long hair of the "prophet" askance, and finally began to nibble.
+
+The luxuriant growth of hair that the odd, old man had allowed to grow
+for years, seemed to attract Billy Bumps' palate. Mr. Seneca Sprague
+slept and Billy gently nibbled at the hair on one side of Seneca's head.
+
+It was just at this moment that Tess and Dot spied the tableau. Billy
+Bumps browsing on Seneca Sprague's hair was a sight to startle and amaze
+anybody.
+
+"O-o-oh!" gasped Dot again.
+
+"Billy! you mustn't!" shrieked Tess, realizing that all of the
+"prophet's" hair was in danger, and fearing, perhaps, that, snake-like,
+Billy might be about gradually to draw the whole of Mr. Seneca Sprague
+within his capacious maw.
+
+"Billy! stop!" cried both girls together.
+
+At this moment Mr. Sprague awoke. Between the shrieking of the little
+girls and the activities of Mr. Sprague when he learned what was going
+on, Billy Bumps' banquet was quite spoiled.
+
+"Get out, you beast!" shouted the "prophet," but using most
+unprophetical language. "Ow! ow! ouch!"
+
+For Billy had no idea of losing what he had already masticated. He
+pulled so hard that he drew Mr. Sprague over on his back, where he lay
+with his legs kicking in the air, wild yells of surprise and pain
+issuing from him.
+
+Over the fence at the rear of the Corner House premises bobbed a flaxen
+head, and a boyish voice shouted: "What's the matter, girls?"
+
+"Oh, Neale O'Neil!" shrieked Dot. "Do come! Quick! Billy Bumps is eating
+up Mr. Sneaker Sp'ague--and he's beginning at his hair."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BASKET BALL TEAM IN TROUBLE
+
+
+Billy Bumps backed away in time to escape the vigorous blow Neale O'Neil
+aimed at him with the stick he had picked up. But the old goat had
+managed to tear loose some of the hair on one side of the odd, old
+fellow's head, and now stood contemplating the angry and excited
+Sprague, with the hair hanging out of his mouth and mingling with his
+own long beard.
+
+"Shorn of my locks! shorn of my locks! Samson has lost his glory and
+strength--yea, verily!" cried the owner of the hair, mournfully. "Yea,
+how hath the mighty fallen and the people imagined a vain thing! And if
+there were anything here hard enough to throw at that old goat!"
+
+Thus getting down to a more practical and modern form of language,
+Seneca Sprague looked wrathfully around for a club or a rock, nothing
+less being sufficiently hard to suit him.
+
+"Oh, you mustn't!" cried Dot. "Poor Billy Bumps doesn't know any better.
+Why, once he chewed up my Alice-doll's best dress. And _I_ didn't hit
+him for it!"
+
+A comparison of a doll's dress with his own hair did not please Mr.
+Sprague much. He shook his now ragged head, from which the lock of hair
+had been torn so roughly. Billy Bumps considered this a challenge and,
+lowering his horns, suddenly charged the despoiled prophet.
+
+"Drat the beast!" yelled Seneca, forgetting his Scriptural language
+entirely; and leaped into the air just in time to make a passage for
+Billy Bumps between his long legs.
+
+Neale, for laughter, could not help.
+
+Slam! went Billy's horns against the end of the hen-house. Mr. Sprague
+was not there to catch the goat on the rebound, for, leaving his bag of
+apples, he rushed for the side gate and got out upon Willow Street
+without much regard for the order of his going, voicing prophecies this
+time that had only to do with Billy Bumps' immediate future.
+
+The disturbance brought Ruth and Agnes running from the house, but only
+in time to see the wrathful Seneca Sprague, his linen duster flapping
+behind him, as he disappeared along Willow Street. When Ruth heard about
+Billy Bumps' banquet, she sent the bag of apples to Seneca Sprague's
+little shanty which he occupied, down on the river dock.
+
+"Of all the ridiculous things a goat ever did, that is the most
+ridiculous!" exclaimed Agnes.
+
+"There's more than one hair in the butter this time," repeated Neale
+O'Neil, with laughter.
+
+"I can't laugh, even at that stale joke," sighed Agnes.
+
+"What's the matter, Aggie?" demanded Neale. "Have you soured on the
+world completely?"
+
+"I feel as though I had," confessed Agnes, her sweet eyes vastly
+troubled and her red lips in a pout. "What do you think, Neale?"
+
+"A whole lot of things," returned the boy. "What do you want me to
+think?"
+
+"Mr. Smartie! But tell me: Have you heard anything about our basket ball
+team being set back? Eva told me she'd heard Mr. Marks was dreadfully
+displeased at something we'd done and that he said we shouldn't win the
+pennant."
+
+"Not win the pennant?" cried Neale, aghast. "Why, you girls have got it
+cinched!"
+
+"Not if Mr. Marks declares all the games we won last spring forfeited. I
+think he's too, too mean!" cried Agnes.
+
+"Oh, he wouldn't do that!" urged Neale.
+
+"She says he is going to."
+
+"Eve Larry doesn't always get things straight," said Neale,
+comfortingly. "But what does he do it for?"
+
+"I don't know. I'm sure _I_ haven't done anything."
+
+"Of course not!" chuckled her boy friend, looking at her rather
+roguishly. "Who was it proposed that raid on old Buckham's strawberry
+patch that time, coming home from Fleeting?"
+
+"Oh! he couldn't know about that," cried Agnes, actually turning pale at
+the suggestion.
+
+"I don't know," Neale said slowly. "Trix Severn was in your crowd then,
+and she'd tell anything if she got mad."
+
+"And she's mad all right," groaned Agnes.
+
+"I believe she is--with you Corner House girls," added Neale O'Neil.
+
+"She'd be telling on herself--the mean thing!" snapped Agnes.
+
+"But she is not on the team. She was along only as a rooter. The
+electric car broke down alongside of Buckham's strawberry patch. Wasn't
+that it?"
+
+"Uh-huh," admitted Agnes. "And the berries _did_ look so tempting."
+
+"You girls got into Buckham's best berries," chuckled Neale. "I heard he
+was quite wild about it."
+
+"We didn't take many. And I really didn't think about it's being
+stealing," Agnes said slowly. "We just did it for a lark."
+
+"Of course. 'Didn't mean to' is an old excuse," retorted the boy.
+
+"Well, Mr. Buckham couldn't have known about it then," cried Agnes. "I
+don't believe Mr. Marks heard of it through him. If he had, why not
+before this time, after months have gone by?"
+
+"I know. It's all blown over and forgotten, when up it pops again.
+'Murder will out,' they say. But you girls only murdered a few
+strawberries. It looks to me," added Neale O'Neil, "as though somebody
+was trying to get square."
+
+"Get square with _whom_?" demanded Agnes.
+
+"Well--you were all in it, weren't you?"
+
+"All the team?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I suppose so. But Trix and some of the others picked and ate quite as
+many berries as we did. The girls that went over to Fleeting to root for
+us were all in it, too."
+
+"I know," Neale said. "If the farmer had been sure who you were, or any
+of the electric car men had told---- Had the car all to yourselves,
+didn't you?"
+
+"We girls were the only passengers," said Agnes.
+
+"Then make up your mind to it," the wise Neale rejoined, "that if Mr.
+Marks has only recently been told of the raid, some girl has been
+blabbing. The farmer or the conductor or the motorman would have told at
+once. They wouldn't have waited until three months and more had passed."
+
+"Oh dear, Neale! do you think that?"
+
+"It looks just like a mean girl's trick. Some telltale," returned the
+boy, in disgust.
+
+"Trix Severn might do it, I s'pose, because she doesn't like me any
+more."
+
+"You remember what Mr. Marks told us all last spring when we grammar
+grade fellows were let into the high school athletics? He said that
+one's conduct outside of school would govern the amount of latitude he
+would allow us in school athletics. I guess he meant you girls, too."
+
+"He's an awfully strict old thing!" complained Agnes.
+
+"They tell me," pursued Neale O'Neil, "that once a part of the baseball
+nine played hookey to go swimming at Ryer's Ford, and Mr. Marks
+immediately forfeited all the games in the Inter-scholastic League for
+that year, and so punished the whole school."
+
+"That's not fair!" exploded Agnes.
+
+"I don't know whether it is or not. But I know the baseball captain this
+year was mighty strict with us fellows."
+
+The topic of the promised punishment of the basket ball team for an old
+offense was discussed almost as much at the Corner House that evening as
+was the "lady in gray" and the sovereigns of England.
+
+Tess kept these last subjects alive, for she was studying the rhyme and
+would try to recite it to everybody that would listen--including Linda,
+who scarcely understood ten words of English, and Sandyface and her
+family, gathered for their supper in the woodshed. Tess was troubled
+about the closing of the Women's and Children's Hospital, because of its
+effect upon Mrs. Eland, too.
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+        Then William, the son;
+      Henry, Stephen and----'
+
+I do hope," ruminated Tess, "that that poor Mrs. Eland won't be turned
+out of her place. Don't you hope so, Ruthie?"
+
+"I am sure it would be a calamity if the hospital were closed," agreed
+the older sister. "And the matron must be a very lovely lady, as you
+say, Tess."
+
+"She is awfully nice--isn't she, Dot?" pursued Tess, who usually
+expected the support of Dorothy.
+
+"Just as nice as she can be," agreed the smallest Corner House girl.
+"Couldn't she come to live in our house if she can't stay in the
+horsepistol any longer?"
+
+"At the _what_, child?" gasped Agnes. "What is it you said?"
+
+"Well--where she lives now," Dot responded, dodging the doubtful word.
+
+"Goodness, dear!" laughed Ruth, "we can't make the old Corner House a
+refuge for destitute females."
+
+"I don't care!" spoke up Dot, quickly. "Didn't they make the
+Toomey-Smith house, on High Street into a home for indignant old maids?"
+
+At that the older girls shouted with laughter.
+"'In-di-gent'--'in-di-gent'! child," corrected Agnes, at last. "That
+means without means--poor--unable to care for themselves. 'Indignant old
+maids,' indeed!"
+
+"Maybe they _were_ indignant," suggested Tess, too tender hearted to see
+Dot's ignorance exposed in public, despite her own private criticism of
+the little one's misuse of the English language. "See how indignant
+Aunt Sarah is--and _she's_ an old maid."
+
+This amused Ruth and Agnes even more than Dot's observation. It was true
+that Aunt Sarah Maltby was frequently "an indignant old maid."
+
+But Tess endured the laughter calmly. She was deeply interested in the
+problem of Mrs. Eland's future, and she said:
+
+"Maybe Uncle Peter ought to have left the hospital some of his money
+when he died, instead of leaving it all to us and to Aunt Sarah."
+
+"Do you want to give up some of your monthly allowance to help support
+the hospital, Tess?" demanded Ruth, briskly.
+
+"I--I---- Well, I couldn't give _much_," said the smaller girl,
+seriously, "for a part of it goes to missions and the Sunday School
+money box, and part to Sadie Goronofsky's cousin who has a nawful bad
+felon, and can't work on the paper flowers just now----"
+
+"Why, child!" the oldest Kenway said, with a tender smile, and putting
+her hand lightly on Tess' head, "I didn't know about that. How much of
+your pin money goes each month to charity already? You only have a
+dollar and a half."
+
+"I--I keep half a dollar for myself," confessed Tess. "I could give part
+of that to the hospital."
+
+"I'll give some of my pin money, too," announced Dot, gravely, "if it
+will keep Mrs. Eland from being turned out of the horsepistol."
+
+Ruth and Agnes did not chide the little one for her mispronunciation of
+the hard word this time, but they looked at each other seriously. "I
+wonder if Uncle Peter was one of those rich people who should have
+remembered the institution in his will?" Ruth said.
+
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Agnes. "If we go around hunting for duties Uncle
+Peter Stower left undone, and do them for him, where will _we_ be? There
+will be no money left for ourselves."
+
+"You need not be afraid," Ruth said, with a smile. "Mr. Howbridge will
+not let us use our money foolishly. He is answerable for every penny of
+it to the Court. But maybe he will approve of our giving a proper sum
+towards a fund for keeping the Women's and Children's Hospital open."
+
+"Is there such a fund?" demanded Agnes.
+
+"There will be, I think. If everybody is interested----"
+
+"And how you going to interest 'em?" asked the skeptical Agnes.
+
+"Talk about it! Publicity! That is what is needed," declared Ruth,
+vigorously. "Why! we might all do something."
+
+"Who--all? I want to know!" responded her sister. "I don't have a cent
+more than I need for myself. Only two dollars and a half." Agnes'
+allowance had been recently increased half a dollar by the observant
+lawyer.
+
+"All of us can help," said Ruth. "Boys and girls alike, as well as grown
+people. The schools ought to do something to raise money for the
+hospital's support."
+
+"Like a fair, maybe--or a bazaar," cried Agnes, eagerly. "That ought to
+be fun."
+
+"You are always looking for fun," said Ruth.
+
+"I don't care. If we can combine business with pleasure, so much the
+better," laughed Agnes. "It's easier to do things that are amusing than
+those that are dead serious."
+
+"There you go!" sighed Ruth. "You are becoming the slangiest girl. I
+believe you get it all from Neale O'Neil."
+
+"Poor Neale!" sniffed Agnes, regretfully. "He gets blamed for all my
+sins and his own, too. If I had a wooden arm, Ruth, you'd say I caught
+it of him, you detest boys so."
+
+Part of this conversation between her older sisters must have made a
+deep impression on Tess Kenway's mind. She went forth as an apostle for
+the Women's and Children's Hospital, and for Mrs. Eland in particular.
+She said to Mr. Stetson, their groceryman, the next morning, with
+profound gravity:
+
+"Do you know, Mr. Stetson, that the Women's and Children's Hospital has
+got to be closed?"
+
+"Why, no, Tess--is that so?" he said, staring at her. "What for?"
+
+"Because there is no money to pay Mrs. Eland. And now she won't have any
+home."
+
+"Mrs. Eland?"
+
+"The matron, you know. And she's such a nice lady," pursued Tess. "She
+taught me the sovereigns of England."
+
+Mr. Stetson might have laughed. He was frequently vastly amused by the
+queer sayings and doings of the two youngest Corner House girls, as he
+often told his wife and Myra. But on this occasion Tess was so serious
+that to laugh at her would have hurt her feelings. Mr. Stetson expressed
+his regret regarding the calamity which had overtaken Mrs. Eland and the
+hospital. He had never thought of the institution before, and said to
+his wife that he supposed they "might spare a trifle toward such a good
+cause."
+
+Tess carried her tale of woe into another part of the town when she and
+Dot went with their dolls to call on Mrs. Kranz and Maria Maroni, on
+Meadow Street, where the Stower tenement property was located.
+
+"Did you know about the Women's and Children's Hospital being shut up,
+Mrs. Kranz?" Tess asked that huge woman, who kept the neatest and
+cleanest of delicatessen and grocery stores possible. "And Mrs. Eland
+can't stay there."
+
+"Ach! you dond't tell me!" exclaimed the German woman. "Ist dodt so? And
+vor vy do dey close de hospital yedt? Aind't it a goot vun?"
+
+"I think it must be a very good one," Tess said soberly, "for Mrs. Eland
+is an awfully nice lady, and she is the matron. She taught me the
+sovereigns of England. I'll recite them for you." This she proceeded to
+do.
+
+"Very goot! very goot!" announced Mrs. Kranz. "Maria can't say that
+yedt."
+
+Maria Maroni, the very pretty Italian girl (she was about Agnes' age)
+who helped Mrs. Kranz in the store, laughed good-naturedly. "I guess I
+knew them once," she said. "But I have forgotten. I never like any
+history but 'Merican history, and that of Italy."
+
+"Ach! you foreigners are all alike," Mrs. Kranz protested, considering
+herself a bred-in-the-bone American, having lived in the country so
+long.
+
+Although she was scolding her brisk and pretty little assistant most of
+the time, she really loved Maria Maroni very dearly. Maria's mother and
+father--with their fast growing family--lived in the cellar of the same
+building in which was Mrs. Kranz's shop. Joe Maroni, as was shown by the
+home-made sign at the cellar door, sold
+
+    ISE COLE WOOD VGERTABLS
+
+and was a smiling, voluble Italian, in a velveteen suit and cap, with
+gold rings in his ears, who never set his bright, black eyes upon one of
+the Corner House girls but he immediately filled a basket with his
+choicest fruit as a gift for "da leetla padrona," as he called Ruth
+Kenway. He had an offering ready for Tess and Dot to take home when they
+reappeared from Mrs. Kranz's back parlor.
+
+"Oh, thank you, Mr. Maroni," Tess said, while Dot allowed one of the
+smaller Maronis to hold the Alice-doll for a blissful minute. "I know
+Ruthie will be delighted."
+
+"Si! si! _dee_-lighted!" exclaimed Joe, showing all his very white teeth
+under his brigand's mustache. "The leetla T'eressa ees seek?"
+
+"Oh, no, Mr. Maroni!" denied Tess, with a sigh. "I am very well. But I
+feel very bad in my mind. They are going to close the Women's and
+Children's Hospital and my friend, Mrs. Eland, who is the matron, will
+have no place to go."
+
+Joe looked a little puzzled, for although Maria and some of her brothers
+and sisters went to school, their father did not understand or speak
+English very well. Tess patiently explained about the good work the
+hospital did and why Mrs. Eland was in danger of losing her position.
+
+"Too bad-a! si! si!" ejaculated the sympathetic Italian. "We mak-a da
+good mon' now. We geev somet'ing to da hospital for da poor leetla
+children--_si! si!_"
+
+"Oh, will you, Mr. Maroni?" cried Tess. "Ruth says there ought to be a
+fund started for the hospital. I'll tell her you'll give to it."
+
+"Sure! you tell-a leetla padrona. Joe geeve--sure!"
+
+"Oh, Dot! we can int'rest lots of folks--just as Ruth said," Tess
+declared, as the two little girls wended their way homeward. "We'll talk
+to everybody we know about the hospital and Mrs. Eland."
+
+To this end Tess even opened the subject with Uncle Rufus' daughter,
+Petunia Blossom, who chanced to be at the old Corner House when Tess and
+Dot arrived, delivering the clothes which she washed each week for the
+Kenways.
+
+Petunia Blossom was an immensely fat negress--and most awfully black.
+Uncle Rufus often said: "How come Pechunia so brack is de mysteriest
+mystery dat evah was. She done favah none o' ma folkses, nor her
+mammy's. She harks back t' some ol' antsistah dat was suttenly mighty
+brack--yaas'm!"
+
+"I dunno as I kin spar' anyt'ing fo' dis hospital, honey," Petunia said,
+seriously, when Tess broached the subject. "It's a-costin' me a lot t'
+keep up ma dues wid de Daughters of Miriam."
+
+"What's the Daughters of Miriam, Petunia?" asked Agnes, who chanced to
+overhear this conversation on the back porch. "Is it a lodge?"
+
+"Hit's mo' dan a lodge, Miss Aggie," proclaimed Petunia, with pride.
+"It's a beneficial ordah--yaas'm!"
+
+"And what benefit do you derive from it?" queried Agnes.
+
+"Why, I doesn't git nottin' f'om it yet awhile, honey," said Petunia,
+unctiously. "But w'en I's daid, I gits one hunderd an' fifty dollahs.
+Same time, dey's 'bleeged t' tend ma funeral."
+
+"Dat brack woman suah is a flickaty female," grumbled Uncle Rufus, when
+he heard Agnes repeating the story of Petunia's "benefit" to the family
+at dinner that night. When nobody but the immediate family was present
+at table, Uncle Rufus assumed the privilege of discussing matters with
+the girls. "She's allus wastin' her money on sech things. Dere, she has
+got t' die t' git her benefit out'n dem Daughters of Miriam. She's
+mighty flickaty."
+
+"What does 'flickaty' mean, Uncle Rufus, if you please?" asked Dot,
+hearing a new word, and rather liking the sound of it.
+
+"Why, chile, dat jes' mean _flickaty_--das all," returned the old
+butler, chuckling. "Dah ain't nottin' in de langwidge what kin explanify
+dat wo'd. Nor dah ain't no woman, brack or w'ite, mo' flickaty dan dat
+same Pechunia Blossom."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE STONE IN THE POOL
+
+
+"Great oaks from little acorns grow." Tess Kenway, with her little,
+serious effort, had no idea what she was starting for the benefit of
+Mrs. Eland, and incidentally for the neglected Women's and Children's
+Hospital. And this benefit was not of the unpractical character for
+which Petunia Blossom was paying premiums into the treasury of the
+Daughters of Miriam!
+
+Tess' advertisement, wherever she went, of the hospital's need, called
+the attention of many heretofore thoughtless people to it. Through Mr.
+Stetson and Mrs. Kranz many people were reminded of the institution that
+had already done such good work. They said, "It would be a shame to
+close that hospital. Something ought to be done about it."
+
+Tess Kenway's word was like a stone dropped into a placid pool. The
+water stirred by the plunge of the stone spreads in wavelets in an ever
+widening circle till it compasses the entire pool. So with the little
+Corner House girl's earnest speech regarding the hospital's need of
+funds.
+
+Tess and Dot did not see the woman in the gray cloak again--not just
+then, at least; but they thought about her a great deal, and talked
+about her, too. A bag of the pippins went to the hospital by Neale
+O'Neil's friendly hand, addressed to Mrs. Eland, and with the names of
+the two youngest Corner House girls inside.
+
+"I do hope she likes apples," Tess said. "I'm _so_ much obliged to her
+for the sovereigns of England."
+
+Tess wondered, too, if she should take some of the apples to school that
+first day of the fall term to present to Miss Pepperill. Dot took _her_
+teacher some. Dot was to have the same teacher this term that she had
+had the last. Tess finally decided that the sharp and red-haired Miss
+Pepperill might think that she, Tess, was trying to bribe her to forget
+the sovereigns of England.
+
+"And I am quite sure I know them perfectly. That is, if she doesn't fuss
+me too much when she asks the question," Tess said to Ruth, with whom
+she discussed the point. "I won't take her the apples, I guess, until
+after I have recited the sovereigns."
+
+Despite the declaration that she had learned perfectly the rhyme Mrs.
+Eland had written out for her, Tess Kenway went into school that first
+day of the term feeling very sober indeed. Many of the girls in her
+class looked sober, too. Pupils who had graduated from Miss Pepperill's
+class had reported the red-haired lady as being "awfully strict."
+
+Indeed, before the scholars were quite settled at their desks, they had
+a proof of Miss Pepperill's discipline. Some of the boys in Tess' class
+had reputations to maintain (or thought they had) for "not bein' scart
+of teacher." Sammy Pinkney often boasted to wondering and wide-eyed
+little girls that "no old teacher could make him a fraid cat."
+
+"What's your name--you with the black hair and warts on your hands?"
+demanded the new teacher, sharply and suddenly.
+
+She pointed directly at the grinning and inattentive Sammy. There was no
+mistaking Miss Pepperill's meaning and some of the other boys giggled,
+for Sammy did have warts on his grimy little paws.
+
+"What's your name?" repeated the teacher, with rising inflection.
+
+"Sam--Sam Pinkney," replied Sammy, just a little startled, but trying to
+appear brave.
+
+"Stand up when you reply to a question!" snapped Miss Pepperill.
+
+Sammy stumbled to his feet.
+
+"Now! What is your name? Again."
+
+"Sam Pinkney."
+
+"Sam-u-e-l?"
+
+"Well--that's 'Sam,' ain't it?" drawled the boy, gaining courage.
+
+But he never spoke so again when Miss Pepperill addressed him. That
+woman strode down the aisle to Sammy's seat, seized the cringing boy by
+the lobe of his right ear, and marched him up to her desk. There she
+sat him down "in the seat of penitence" beside her own chair, saying:
+
+"I'll attend to your case later, young man. Evidently the long vacation
+has done you no good. You have forgotten how to speak to your teacher."
+
+The girls were much disturbed by this manifestation of the new teacher's
+sternness. Sadie Goronofsky whispered to Tess:
+
+"Oh! don't she get excited easy?"
+
+The whites of Alfredia Blossom's eyes were fairly enlarged by her
+surprise and terror at this proceeding on the new teacher's part. After
+that, Alfredia jumped every time Miss Pepperill spoke.
+
+Miss Pepperill noted none of this cringing terror on the part of her new
+pupils. Or else she was used to it. She marched up and down the aisles,
+seating and reseating the pupils until she had them arranged to her
+satisfaction, and suddenly she pounced on Tess.
+
+"Ah!" she said, stopping before the Corner House girl's desk. "You are
+Theresa Kenway?"
+
+Tess arose before replying. "Yes, ma'am," she said.
+
+"Ah! Didn't I give you a question to answer this first day?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," replied Tess, trying to speak calmly.
+
+Miss Pepperill evidently expected to find Tess at fault. "What was the
+question, Theresa?" she asked.
+
+"You told me to be prepared to recite for you the succession of the
+sovereigns of England."
+
+"Well, are you prepared?" snapped Miss Pepperill.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," Tess said waveringly. "I learned them in a rhyme, Miss
+Pepperill. It was the only way I could remember them all--and in the
+proper succession. May I recite them that way?"
+
+"Let me hear the rhyme," commanded the teacher.
+
+Tess began in a shaking voice, but as she progressed she gained
+confidence in the sound of her own voice, and, knowing the rhyme
+perfectly, she came through the ordeal well.
+
+"Who taught you that, Theresa?" demanded Miss Pepperill, not unkindly.
+
+"Mrs. Eland wrote it down for me. She said she learned it so when she
+was a little girl. At least, all but the last four lines. She said
+_they_ were 'riginal."
+
+"Ah! I should say they were," said Miss Pepperill. "And who is Mrs.
+Eland?"
+
+"Mrs. Eland is an awfully nice lady," Tess said eagerly, accepting the
+opening the teacher unwittingly gave her. "She is matron of the Women's
+and Children's Hospital, and do you _know_, they say they are going to
+close the hospital because there aren't enough funds, and poor Mrs.
+Eland won't have any place to go. We think it's dreadful and, Miss
+Pepperill,----"
+
+"Well, well!" interposed Miss Pepperill, with a grim smile, "that will
+do now, Theresa. I have heard all about that. I fancy you must be the
+little girl who is going around telling everybody about it. I heard Mr.
+Marks speak this morning about the needs of the Women's and Children's
+Hospital.
+
+"We'll excuse your further remarks on that subject, Theresa. But you
+recited the succession of the English sovereigns very well indeed. I,
+too, learned that rhyme when I was a little girl."
+
+Tess thought the bespectacled teacher said this last rather more
+sympathetically. She felt rebuked, however, and tried to keep a watch on
+her tongue thereafter in Miss Pepperill's presence.
+
+At least, she felt that she had comported herself well with the rhyme,
+and settled back into her seat with a feeling of thankfulness.
+
+Miss Pepperill's mention of Mr. Marks' observation before the teachers
+regarding the little girl who was preaching the gospel of help for the
+hospital, made no impression at all on Tess Kenway's mind. She had no
+idea that she had made so many grown people think of the institution's
+needs.
+
+Before the high school classes early in that first week of school, the
+principal incorporated in his welcoming remarks something of importance
+regarding this very thing.
+
+"We open school this term with quite a novel proposal before us. It has
+not yet been sanctioned by the Board of Education, although I
+understand that that body is soon to have it under advisement. In
+several towns of Milton's size and importance, there were last winter
+presented spectacles and musical plays, mainly by the pupils of the
+public schools of the several towns, and always for worthy charitable
+objects.
+
+"The benefit to be gained by the schools in general and by the pupils
+that took part in the plays in particular, looked very doubtful to me at
+a distance; but this summer I made it my business to examine into the
+results of such appearances in musical pieces by pupils of other
+schools. I find it develops their dramatic instinct and an appreciation
+of music and acting. It gives vent, too, to the natural desire of young
+people to dance and sing, and to 'act out' a pleasant story, while they
+are really helping a worthy work of charity.
+
+"One of the most successful of these school plays is called _The
+Carnation Countess_. It is a play with music which lends itself to
+brilliant costuming, spectacular scenery, and offers many minor parts
+which can easily be filled by you young people. A small company of
+professional players and singers carry the principal parts in _The
+Carnation Countess_; but if we are allowed to take up the production of
+this play--say in holiday week--I promise you that every one who feels
+the desire to do so, may have a part in it.
+
+"The matter is all unsettled at present. But it is something to think
+of. Besides, a very small girl, I understand, a pupil in our grammar
+grade, is preaching a crusade for Milton's Women's and Children's
+Hospital. Inspired or not, that child has, during the past few days,
+awakened many people of this town to their duty towards that very
+estimable institution.
+
+"The Women's and Children's Hospital is poor. It needs funds. Indeed, it
+is about to be closed for lack of sufficient means to pay salaries and
+buy supplies. The _Post_ has several times tried to awaken public
+interest in the institution, but to no avail.
+
+"Now, this child, as I have said, has done more than the public press.
+And quite unconsciously, I have no doubt.
+
+"This is the way great things are often done. The seed timidly sown
+often brings forth the abundant crop. The stone thrown into the middle
+of the pool starts a wave that reaches the very shore.
+
+"However, if we act the play for the charity proposed or not, there is a
+matter somewhat connected with it," continued the principal, his face
+clouding for a moment, "that I am obliged to bring to your attention. Of
+course, it is understood that only the pupils who do their work
+satisfactorily to their immediate instructors, will have any share in
+the production of the play.
+
+"This rule, I am sorry to say, will affect certain members of our
+athletic teams who, I find, have been anything but correct in their
+behavior. I shall take this serious matter up in a few days with the
+culprits in question. At present I will only say that the basket ball
+match set for next Saturday with the team from the Kenyon school, will
+be forfeited. All the members, I understand, of our first basket ball
+team are equally guilty of misbehavior at a time when they were on
+honor.
+
+"I will see the members of the team in my office after the second
+session to-day. You are dismissed to your classes, young ladies and
+gentlemen."
+
+The blow had fallen! Agnes was so amazed and troubled that she failed to
+connect Mr. Marks' observations about the child who was arousing Milton
+to its duty towards the Women's and Children's Hospital, with her own
+little sister, Tess.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JUST OUT OF REACH
+
+
+Ruth Kenway, however, realized that it was Tess who was the instrument
+which was being used in arousing public interest in the Women's and
+Children's Hospital--and likewise in Mrs. Eland, who had given five
+years of faithful work to the institution.
+
+She was particularly impressed on this very afternoon, when poor Agnes
+was journeying toward Mr. Marks' office with her fellow-culprits of the
+basket ball team, with Tess' preachment of the need of money for the
+hospital. Ruth came home from school to find Mr. Howbridge waiting for
+her in the sitting room with Tess, who had arrived some time before,
+entertaining him.
+
+As the door was open into the hall, Ruth heard the murmur of their
+voices while she was still upstairs at her toilet-table; so when she
+tripped lightly down the broad front stairs it was not eavesdropping if
+she continued to listen to her very earnest little sister and the
+lawyer.
+
+"But just supposing Uncle Peter _had_ been 'approached,' as you say, for
+money for that hospital--and s'pose he knew just how nice Mrs. Eland
+was--don't you think he would have left them some in his will, Mr.
+Howbridge?"
+
+"Can't say I do, my dear--considering what I know about Mr. Peter
+Stower," said the lawyer, drily.
+
+"Well," sighed Tess, "I do wish he had met my Mrs. Eland! I am sure he
+would have been int'rested in her."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"Oh, yes! For she is the very nicest lady you ever saw, Mr. Howbridge.
+And I _do_ think you might let us give some of the money to the hospital
+that Uncle Peter forgot to give--if he had been reminded, of course."
+
+"That child should enter my profession when she grows up," said Mr.
+Howbridge to Ruth, when Tess had been excused. "She'll split hairs in
+argument even now. What's started her off on this hospital business?"
+
+Ruth told him. She told, too, what Tess did each month with her own pin
+money, and the next allowance day Tess was surprised to find an extra
+half dollar in her envelope.
+
+"Oh--ee!" she cried. "Now I _can_ give something to the hospital fund,
+can't I, Ruthie?"
+
+Meanwhile, Agnes, with Eva Larry, Myra Stetson, and others of her
+closest friends (Agnes had a number of bosom chums) waited solemnly in
+Mr. Marks' office. More than the basket ball team was present in anxious
+waiting for the principal's appearance.
+
+"Where's Trix Severn?" demanded Eva in a whisper of the other girls.
+"She ought to be in this."
+
+"In what?" demanded another girl, trying to play the part of innocence.
+
+"Ah-yah!" sneered Eva, very inelegantly. "As though you didn't know what
+it is all about!"
+
+"Well, I'm sure I don't," snapped this girl. "Mr. Marks sent for me. I
+don't belong to your old basket ball team."
+
+"No. But you were with us on that car last May," said Agnes, sharply,
+"You know what we're all called here for."
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"If you weren't told so publicly as we were to come here, you'll find
+that he knows all about your being in it," said Eva.
+
+"And that will amount to the same thing in the end, Mary Breeze,"
+groaned Agnes.
+
+"I don't know at all what you are talking about," cried Miss Breeze,
+tossing her head, and trying to bolster up her own waning courage.
+
+"If you don't know now, you'll never learn, Mary," laughed Myra Stetson.
+"We are all in the same boat."
+
+"You bet we are!" added the slangy Eva.
+
+"Every girl here was on that car that day coming from Fleeting,"
+announced Agnes, after a moment, having counted noses. "You were in the
+crowd, Mary."
+
+"What day coming from Fleeting?" snapped the girl, who tried to
+"bluff," as Neale O'Neil would have termed it.
+
+"The time the car broke down," cried another. "Oh, I remember!"
+
+"Of course you do. So does Mary," Eva said. "We were all in it."
+
+"And, oh, weren't those berries good!" whispered Myra, ecstatically.
+
+"Well, I don't care!" said Mary Breeze, "you started it, Aggie Kenway."
+
+"I know it," admitted Agnes, hopelessly.
+
+"But nobody tied you hand and foot and dragged you into that farmer's
+strawberry patch--so now, Mary!" cried Eva Larry. "You needn't try to
+creep out of it."
+
+"Say! Trix seems to be creeping out of it," drawled Myra. "Don't you
+s'pose Mr. Marks has heard that she was in the party?"
+
+"Sh!" said Agnes, suddenly. "Here he comes."
+
+The principal came in, stepping in his usual quick, nervous way. He was
+a small, plump man, with rosy cheeks, eyeglasses, and an ever present
+smile which sometimes masked a series of very sharp and biting remarks.
+On this occasion the smile covered but briefly the bitter words he had
+to say.
+
+"Young ladies! Your attention, please! My attention has been called to
+the fact that, on the twenty-third of last May--a Saturday--when our
+basket ball team played that of the Fleeting schools, you girls--all of
+you--on the way back from the game, were guilty of entering Mr. Robert
+Buckham's field at Ipswitch Curve, and appropriated to your own use, and
+without permission, a quantity--whether it be small or large--of
+strawberries growing in that field. The farmer himself furnishes me with
+the list of your names. I have not seen him personally as yet; but as
+Mr. Buckham has taken the pains to trace the culprits after all this
+time has elapsed he must consider the matter serious.
+
+"What particular punishment shall be meted out to you, I have not
+decided. As a general and lasting rebuke, however, I had thought of
+forfeiting all the games the team has already won in the county series,
+and refuse permission to you to play again this year. But by doing that
+the schools of Milton would be punished in total, for the athletic
+standing of all would be lowered.
+
+"Now I have considered a more equitable way of making you young ladies
+pay the penalty of that very unladylike and dishonest proceeding. If the
+Board of Education sanctions a production of _The Carnation Countess_ by
+the pupils of the Milton schools, all you young ladies will be debarred
+from taking any part whatever in the play.
+
+"I see very well," pursued Mr. Marks, "that you who were guilty of
+robbing Mr. Buckham are girls who would be quite sure of securing
+prominent parts in the play. You are debarred. That, at present, is all
+I shall say on this subject. If the farmer claims damages, that will be
+another matter."
+
+With his rosy face smiling and his eyeglasses sparkling, the principal
+dismissed the woeful party. They filed out of the office, very glum
+indeed. And Mary Breeze was more than a little inclined to blame Agnes.
+
+"I don't care! I took only a few berries myself," she complained. "And
+we none of us would have thought of going over that fence and raiding
+the strawberry patch if it hadn't been for Agnes."
+
+"Ah-yah!" repeated Eva, with scorn. "What's the use of saying that?
+Aggie may have been the first one over the fence; but we were all right
+after her. She may have a little the quickest mind in this crowd, but
+her limbs are no quicker."
+
+"And how about Trix?" murmured Myra Stetson. "How is it she has escaped
+the deluge?"
+
+That is what Neale O'Neil asked when he met Agnes just before she
+reached the old Corner House.
+
+"Oh, Aggie, how did you come out?" he asked soberly. "Was Mr. Marks just
+as hard on you as he could be?"
+
+"I think so," Agnes replied gravely. "We don't just know yet what he
+means to do. Only in part. But that part is just _awful_!"
+
+"Was the row about Buckham's berries?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I thought so. What's he going to do to you? Make you forfeit all the
+games?"
+
+"No. Maybe something worse than that."
+
+"Worse? What is it?" asked Neale, in wonder.
+
+"He says we none of us can act in that play he told about this morning."
+
+"Huh!" muttered the boy, eyeing Agnes' flushed face and tearful eyes in
+surprise. "Do you care?"
+
+"Oh, Neale! I _know_ I can act. I love it. I've always been crazy for
+it. And now, when there's maybe a chance, I am not--going--to--be--let!"
+
+"Goodness! do you really feel so bad about it, Aggie?"
+
+"I--I---- Why, my heart will be just _broken_ if I can't act in _The
+Carnation Countess_," sobbed the Corner House girl.
+
+"Oh, cricky! Don't turn on the sprinkler again, Aggie," begged Neale, in
+a panic.
+
+"I--I just can't help it! To think of there being a play acted in this
+town, and I might be in it!" wailed Agnes. "And now it's just out of my
+reach! It's too mean for anything, that's what it is!"
+
+She threatened to burst into another flood, and Neale tried to head the
+tears off by saying:
+
+"Don't cry again, Aggie. Oh, don't! If you won't cry I'll try to find
+some way of getting you out of the scrape."
+
+"You--you can't, Neale O'Neil!"
+
+"We--ell, I can try."
+
+"And I wouldn't want to get out of it myself unless the other girls
+escaped punishment, too."
+
+"You're a good little sport, Aggie. I always said so," Neale declared,
+admiringly. "Say, that reminds me!" he added, suddenly. "Were all the
+girls up before Mr. Marks?"
+
+"All who went over to Fleeting that day, do you mean?"
+
+"Yes. All that were in that car that broke down."
+
+"Why--yes--I think so."
+
+"Huh!" grunted Neale, thoughtfully.
+
+"All but one anyway."
+
+"Hullo! Who was that?"
+
+"The girl who wasn't in Mr. Marks' office?"
+
+"Yes. Who was missing of that bunch of berry raiders?" and Neale
+grinned.
+
+"Why--Trix," said Agnes, slowly.
+
+"Ah-ha! I smell a mouse!"
+
+"What do you mean by that, Neale O'Neil?" cried the girl.
+
+"Nothing significant in the fact that our festive Beatrice was not
+there?"
+
+"No. Why should there be?" demanded Agnes.
+
+"And who do you suppose furnished Mr. Marks with his information and the
+list of you girls' names?"
+
+"Oh, the farmer!"
+
+"Old Buckham?" cried Neale, startled.
+
+"Yes," said Agnes. "Mr. Marks said so."
+
+Neale looked both surprised and doubtful. "Then why didn't Buckham give
+in Trix's name, too?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know, Neale. No use in blaming her just because she was
+lucky enough to escape."
+
+"Oh, that's all right. I'll go to my Lady Beatrice, get down on my
+shin-bones, and beg her pardon, if I wrongfully suspect her," laughed
+Neale. "But, I say, Aggie! did Mr. Buckham come to see Mr. Marks about
+it? Did he say?"
+
+"No. I think Mr. Marks said the farmer wrote."
+
+"_Wrote?_" cried the boy. "Why, I don't believe Bob Buckham _can_ write.
+He's a smart enough old fellow, but he never had any schooling. He told
+me so. He's not a bad sort, either. He must have been awfully mad about
+those strawberries to hold a grudge so long as this. I worked for him a
+while, you know, Aggie."
+
+"Oh, so you did, Neale."
+
+"Yes. I don't believe he is the sort who would make so much trouble for
+a bunch of girls. Somebody must have egged him on," said Neale,
+gloomily.
+
+"There you go again, Neale," groaned Agnes. "Hinting at Beatrice
+Severn."
+
+"Well," grinned Neale, "you want me to help you out of your scrape,
+don't you?"
+
+"At nobody else's expense," said Agnes.
+
+"Don't know what to make of it," grumbled Neale. "It looks fishy to me.
+Mr. Buckham writing Mr. Marks! I'm going to find out about _that_. Keep
+up your pluck, Aggie. I'll see what can be done," and Neale, with his
+cap on the back of his flaxen head and his hands in his pockets, went
+off whistling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CORE OF THE APPLE
+
+
+Dot Kenway came home a day or two after this, quite full of her first
+"easy lessons in physiology." It always seemed to Dot that when she
+learned a new fact it was the very first time it had ever been learned
+by anybody.
+
+"Dot is just like a hen," Neale O'Neil said, chuckling. "She gets hold
+of a thing and you'd think nobody ever knew it before she did. She is
+the original discoverer of every fact that gets into her little noddle."
+
+"But how does that make her like a hen?" demanded Ruth.
+
+"Why, a hen lays an egg, and then gets so excited about it and makes
+such a racket, that you'd think that was the first egg that had been
+laid since the world began."
+
+"What is all this you learned, Dottie?" demanded Neale, as they all sat
+around the study lamp; for Neale was often at the old Corner House with
+his books in the evening. He and Agnes were in the same grade.
+
+"Oh, Neale! did you know you had a spinal cord?" demanded the smallest
+Corner House girl.
+
+"No! you don't tell me? Where is it?" asked the boy, quite soberly.
+
+"Why," explained the literal Dot, "it's a string that runs from the back
+of your head to the bottom of your heels."
+
+At the shout of laughter that welcomed this intelligence, Tess said,
+comfortingly:
+
+"Don't mind, Dot. That isn't half as bad as what Sammy Pinkney said to
+Miss Pepperill the other day. She asked us which was the most important
+to keep clean, your face or your teeth, and Sammy shouted: 'Your teeth,
+teacher, 'cause they can rot off and your face can't.'"
+
+"And I guess that awful Miss Pepperpot punished him for that," suggested
+Dot, awed.
+
+"Yes. Sammy is always getting punished," said Tess. "He never _does_
+manage to say the right thing. And I think Miss Pepperill is kind of
+hard on him. But--but she's real nice to me."
+
+"Well, why shouldn't she be, honey?" Ruth said. "You're not to be
+compared with that rude boy, I am sure," for Ruth Kenway did not much
+approve of boys, and only tolerated Neale O'Neil because the other
+children liked him so much.
+
+"I should hope not!" agreed Agnes, who did like boys, but did not like
+the aforesaid scapegrace, Sammy Pinkney.
+
+"I guess it was the sovereigns of England that makes her nice to me,"
+said Tess, thoughtfully. "I 'spected to have an awfully hard time in
+Miss Pepperill's class; but she has never been real cross with me. And
+what do you s'pose?"
+
+"I couldn't guess," Ruth said smilingly.
+
+"To-day she asked me about Mrs. Eland."
+
+"Mrs. Eland?"
+
+"Yes," said Tess, nodding. "She asked me if I'd seen Mrs. Eland lately,
+and if she'd found her sister. For you see," explained Tess, "I'd told
+her how poor Mrs. Eland felt so bad about losing her sister when she was
+a little girl and never being able to find her."
+
+"Oh, yes, I remember," Ruth said.
+
+"But I had to tell Miss Pepperill that I'd only seen her the one
+time--when she taught me the sovereigns of England. I'd really love to
+see Mrs. Eland once more. Wouldn't you, Dot?"
+
+"Dear me, yes!" agreed the smaller girl. "I wonder if she ever got those
+apples?"
+
+"Of course she did," put in Neale. "Didn't I tell you I took them to the
+hospital myself?"
+
+"We--ell! But she never told us so--did she, Dot?" complained Tess.
+
+However, the very next day the children heard from the bag of apples. A
+delightfully suspicious package awaited Tess and Dot at the old Corner
+House after school. It had been delivered by no less a person than Dr.
+Forsyth himself, who stopped his electric runabout in front of the old
+Corner House long enough to run in and set the pasteboard box on the
+sitting room table.
+
+"What forever is that, Doctor?" demanded Mrs. MacCall.
+
+"I hope it's something to make these children sick," declared the
+doctor, gruffly. "They are too disgracefully healthy for anything."
+
+"Yes, thank our stars!" said the housekeeper.
+
+"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" cried the apparently very savage medical man. "But
+what would become of all us poor doctors if everybody were as healthy as
+this family, I'd like to know?" and he tramped out to his car again in
+much make-believe wrath.
+
+Dot came first from school and was shown the box. It was only about six
+inches square and it had a card tied to it addressed to both her and
+Tess. Dot eyed it with the roundest of round eyes, when she heard who
+had brought it.
+
+"Why don't you open it, child?" demanded Aunt Sarah, who chanced to be
+downstairs. "Bring it here and I'll snip the string for you with my
+scissors."
+
+"Oh! I couldn't, Aunt Sarah!" Dot declared.
+
+"Why not, I should admire to know?" snapped the old lady. "It's not too
+heavy for you to carry, I should hope?"
+
+"Oh, no, ma'am. But I can't open it till Tess comes," said Dot.
+
+"Why not, I should admire to know?" repeated Aunt Sarah, in her jerky
+way.
+
+"Why, it wouldn't be fair," said the smallest Corner House girl,
+gravely.
+
+"Huh!" snorted the old lady.
+
+"Tess wouldn't do that to me," Dot said, with assurance.
+
+Agnes chanced to get home next. "What ever do you s'pose is in it,
+Dottums?" she cried. "There's no name on it except yours and Tess'. And
+the doctor brought it!"
+
+"Yes. But I know it isn't pills," declared Dot, seriously.
+
+"How do you know that?" laughed Agnes.
+
+"The box is too big," was the prompt reply. "He brings pills in just the
+_cunningest_ little boxes."
+
+"Maybe it's charlotte russe," suggested Agnes. "They put them in boxes
+like this at the bakery."
+
+"Oh! do you think so?" gasped Dot, scarcely able to contain herself.
+
+"If they are charlotte rushings," chuckled Neale, who had brought home
+Agnes' books for her, "be careful and not be so piggish as the country
+boy who ate the pasteboard containers as well as the cake and cream of
+the charlotte russe. He said he liked them fine, only the crust was
+tough."
+
+"Mercy!" ejaculated Agnes. "That's like a boy."
+
+"I _do_ hope Tess comes pretty quick!" murmured Dot. "I--I'm just about
+going crazy!"
+
+Tess came finally; but at first she was so excited by something that had
+happened in school that she could not listen to Dot's pleading that she
+should "come and look at the box."
+
+Of course, Sammy Pinkney was in difficulties with the teacher again. And
+Tess could not see for once why he should be punished.
+
+"I'm sure," she said earnestly, "Sammy did his best. And I brought the
+composition he wrote home for you to see, Ruthie. Sammy dropped it out
+of his book and I will give it to him to-morrow.
+
+"But Miss Pepperill acted just like she thought Sammy had misbehaved
+himself. She said she hoped she hadn't a 'humorist in embryo' in her
+class. What did she mean by that, Ruthie? What's a humorist in embryo!"
+
+"A sprouting funny man," said Agnes, laughing. "Maybe Sammy Pinkney will
+grow up to write for the funny columns in the newspapers."
+
+"Let us see the paper, Tess," said Ruth. "Maybe that will explain just
+what Miss Pepperill meant."
+
+"And poor Sammy's got to stay after school for a week," said Tess,
+sympathetically, producing a much smudged and wrinkled sheet of
+composition paper.
+
+"_Do_ come and see the box!" wailed Dot.
+
+Tess went with her smaller sister then, leaving Ruth to read aloud for
+the delight of the rest of the family Sammy Pinkney's composition on
+
+    "THE DUCK
+
+    "The duck is a low heavyset bird he is a mighty poor singer
+    having a coarse voice like crows only worse caused by getting to
+    many frogs in his neck. He is parshal to water and aks like hed
+    swallowed a toy balloon that keeps him from sinking the best he
+    can do is to sink his head straight down but his tail fethers is
+    always above water. Duks has only two legs and they is set so
+    far back on his running gears by Nachur that they come pretty
+    near missin' his body altogether. Some ducks when they get big
+    curls on their tails is called drakes and don't have to set or
+    hatch but just loaf and go swimming and eat ev'rything in sight
+    so if I had to be a duck I'd ruther be a drake. There toes are
+    set close together the web skin puts them in a poor way of
+    scratching but they have a wide bill for a spade and they walk
+    like they was tipsy. They bounce and bump from side to side and
+    if you scare them they flap there wings and try to make a pass
+    at singing which is pore work. That is all about ducks."
+
+"Do you suppose," cried Agnes in wonder, "that that boy doesn't know any
+better than that composition _sounds_?"
+
+"Evidently Miss Pepperill thinks he does," laughed Ruth. "But it _is_
+funny. I wonder what will happen to Sammy Pinkney when he grows up?"
+
+"The question is, what will happen to him before he grows up," chuckled
+Neale. "That kid is a public nuisance. I don't know but that the
+dog-catchers will get him yet."
+
+Meanwhile the two little girls had secured the paper box and opened it.
+Their squeals drew all the others to the sitting room. Inside the
+neatly wrapped box was a round object in silver and gold foil, and when
+this was carefully unwound, a big, splendid golden pippin lay on the
+table.
+
+"Why!" cried Dot, "it's one of our own apples."
+
+"It is surely off our pippin tree," agreed Agnes.
+
+"Who could have sent it?" Tess surmised. "And Dr. Forsyth brought it."
+
+"Bringing coals to Newcastle," chuckled Neale.
+
+But when Tess took up the apple, it broke in half. It had been cunningly
+cut through and through, and then the core scooped out, and the halves
+of the apple fastened together again.
+
+"Oo-ee!" squealed Dot again.
+
+For in the core of the apple was a wad of paper, and Tess spread this
+out on the table. It was a note and the reading of it delighted the two
+smaller girls immensely:
+
+    "My dear Lesser Half of the Corner House Quartette," it began.
+    "Your kindness in sending me the nice bag of apples has not been
+    overlooked. I wanted to come and see you, and thank you in
+    person; but my duties at present will not allow me to do so. We
+    are short-handed here at the Women's and Children's Hospital and
+    I can not spare the time for even an afternoon call.
+
+    "I would, however, dearly love to have you little girls, Theresa
+    and Dorothy, both come to call on me, and take tea, some
+    afternoon--the time to be set by your elder sister, Miss Ruth.
+    Ask her to write to me when you may come--on your way home from
+    school, if you like.
+
+    "Hoping I shall have the pleasure of entertaining you soon, I
+    am,
+
+    "Your loving and sincere friend,
+        "MARION ELAND."
+
+"I think that is just too sweet for anything of her," sighed Tess,
+ecstatically. "To call and take tea with her! Won't that be fine, Dot?"
+
+"Fine!" echoed Dot. She bit tentatively into her half of the apple which
+had contained the invitation. "This--this apple isn't hurt a mite,
+Tess," she added and immediately proceeded to eat it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LYCURGUS BILLET'S EAGLE BAIT
+
+
+Ruth set the day--and an early one--for Tess and Dot to take tea with
+their new friend, Mrs. Eland. She wrote a very nice note in reply to
+that found in the core of the apple, and the little girls looked forward
+with delight to seeing the matron of the Woman's and Children's
+Hospital.
+
+But before the afternoon in question arrived something occurred in which
+all the Corner House girls had a part, and Neale O'Neil as well; and it
+was an adventure not soon to be forgotten by any of them. Incidentally,
+Tom Jonah was in it too.
+
+Ruth tried, on pleasant Saturdays, to invent some game or play that all
+could have a part in. This kept the four sisters together, and it was
+seldom that any Corner House girl found real pleasure away from the
+others. Ruth's only cross was that Agnes would drag Neale O'Neil into
+their good times.
+
+Not that Ruth had anything against the white-haired boy. In spite of the
+fact that Neale was brought up in a circus--his uncle was Mr. Bill
+Sorber of Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie--he was
+quite the nicest boy the Corner House girls knew. But Ruth did not
+approve of boys at all; and she thought Agnes rude and slangy enough at
+times without having her so much in the company of a real boy like
+Neale.
+
+She suggested a drive into the country for this late September Saturday,
+chestnuts being their main object, there having been a sharp frost. Of
+course Neale had to arrange for the hiring of the livery team, and the
+stableman refused to let them have a spirited span of horses unless
+Neale drove.
+
+"Well, get an automobile then!" exclaimed Agnes. "It's only three
+dollars an hour, with a man to drive, at Acton's garage. Goodness knows
+I'm just _crazy_ to ride in an auto--one of those big, beautiful
+seven-passenger touring cars. I wish we could have one, Ruthie!"
+
+"I wish we could," said Ruth, for she, too, was automobile hungry like
+the rest of the world.
+
+"Do! _do!_ ask Mr. Howbridge," begged Agnes.
+
+"Not for the world," returned Ruth, decidedly. "He'd think we were
+crazy, indeed. There is money enough to educate us, and clothe and feed
+us; but I do not believe that Uncle Peter's estate will stand the drain
+of automobiles--no indeed!"
+
+"Well," sighed Agnes. "We're lucky to have Neale about. You know very
+well if it were not for him the livery man would give us a pair of
+dead-and-alive old things. Mr. Skinner knows Neale is to be trusted with
+any horse in his stable."
+
+This was true enough; but it added Neale O'Neil to the party. When they
+were about to depart from the old Corner House there was another
+unexpected member added to the company.
+
+Tess and Dot were squeezed in beside Neale on the front seat. Ruth and
+Agnes occupied the back of the carriage with wraps and boxes and baskets
+of eatables. This was to be an all day outing with a picnic dinner in
+the chestnut woods.
+
+"All aboard?" queried Neale, flourishing the whip. "Got everything?
+Haven't left anything good to eat behind, have you?"
+
+"Oh, you boys!" groaned Ruth. "Always thinking of your stomachs."
+
+"Well! why were stomachs put in front of us, if not to be thought of and
+considered?" Neale demanded. "If not, they might as well have been stuck
+on behind like a knapsack, or like our shoulder-blades.
+
+"I say, Mrs. MacCall," proceeded the irrepressible boy. "Plenty of baked
+beans and fishcakes for supper to-night. I see very plainly that these
+girls have brought very little to eat along of a solid character. I
+shall be hungry when we get back."
+
+At that moment Tess cried: "Oh, poor Tom Jonah!" And Dot echoed her:
+"Poor Tom Jonah!"
+
+"Look how eager he is!" cried Agnes.
+
+The big dog stood at the gate. Old as he was, the idea of an outing
+pleased him immensely. He was always delighted to go picnicking with the
+Corner House girls; but as the legend on his collar proclaimed, Tom
+Jonah was a gentleman, and nobody had invited him to go on this
+occasion.
+
+"Oh, Ruth! let him come!" cried the three younger girls in chorus.
+
+"Why not?" added Agnes.
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Ruth.
+
+"It will be a long march for him," said Neale, doubtfully. "He'll get
+left behind. The horses are fast."
+
+"Well, you are the one to see that he isn't left behind, Neale O'Neil,"
+asserted Ruth.
+
+"All right," said the boy, meekly, but winking at Uncle Rufus and Mrs.
+MacCall. Neale had wanted the old dog to go all the time, and his remark
+had turned the scale in Tom Jonah's favor.
+
+"Come, boy! you can go, too," Ruth announced as the horses started.
+
+Tom Jonah uttered a joyful bark, circled the carriage and pair two or
+three times in the exuberance of his delight, and then settled down to a
+steady pace under the rear axle. Neale saw to it that the lively ponies
+did not travel too fast for the old dog.
+
+The carriage rattled across Main Street and out High Street. The town
+was soon left behind, Neale following the automobile road along which
+ran the interurban electric tracks to Fleeting and beyond.
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Agnes, gloomily. "I know this is the way to Fleeting,
+Neale O'Neil. Wish I'd never been there."
+
+"Has Mr. Marks ever said anything further to you girls about Bob
+Buckham's strawberries?" asked her boy friend.
+
+"No. But you see, we haven't played any more outside games, either. And
+I _know_ they'll give _The Carnation Countess_ this winter and we won't
+any of us be allowed to play in it."
+
+"I'm going to be a bee," announced Dot, seriously, "if they have the
+play. I'll have wings and a buzzer."
+
+"A buzzer?" demanded Tess. "What's that?"
+
+"Well, bees buzz, don't they? If they make bees out of us, as teacher
+says they will, we'll have to buzz, won't we? We're learning a buzzing
+song now."
+
+"Goodness! and you'll be provided with a stinger, too, I suppose!"
+exclaimed Agnes.
+
+"Oh! we shall be tame bees," Dot said. "Not at all wild. The song says
+so.
+
+    "'We are little honey-bees,
+        Honey sweet our disposition.
+      We appear here now to please,
+        Making sweets our avocation.
+          Buzz! buzz! buzz-z-z-z!'
+
+That's a verse," concluded Dot.
+
+"Miss Pepperill," observed Tess, sadly, "said only yesterday that if we
+were in the play at all we might act the part of imps better than
+anything else. It would come natural to us."
+
+"Poor Miss Pepperpot!" laughed Agnes. "She must find your class a great
+cross, Tess. How's Sammy standing just now?"
+
+"He hasn't done anything to get her very mad since he wrote about the
+duck," Tess said gravely. "But Sadie Goronofsky got a black mark
+yesterday. And Miss Pepperill laughed, too."
+
+"What for?" asked Ruth.
+
+"Why, teacher asked why Belle Littleweed hadn't been at school for two
+days and Alfredia Blossom told her she guessed Belle's father was dead.
+He was 'spected to die, you know."
+
+"Well, what about Sadie?" asked Agnes, for Tess seemed to have lost the
+thread of her story.
+
+"Why, Sadie speaks up and says: 'Teacher, I don't believe Mr. Littleweed
+is dead at all. I see their clothes on the line and they was all
+white--nightgowns and all.'"
+
+"The idea!" giggled Agnes.
+
+"That's what Miss Pepperill said. She asked Sadie if she thought folks
+wore black nightgowns when they went into mourning, and Sadie says: 'Why
+not, teacher? Don't they feel just as bad at night as they do in the
+daytime?' So then Miss Pepperill said Sadie ought not to ask such silly
+questions, and she gave her a black mark. But I saw her laughing behind
+her spectacles!"
+
+"My! but Tess is the observant kid," said Neale, laughing. "She laughed
+behind her spectacles, did she?"
+
+"Yes. I know when she laughs, no matter how cross her voice sounds,"
+declared Tess, confidently. "If you look right through her spectacles
+you'll see her eyes jumping. But I guess she's afraid to let us all see
+that she feels pleasant."
+
+"She's afraid to spoil her discipline, I suppose," said Ruth. "But if
+ever I teach school I hope I can govern my scholars by making them love
+me--not through fear."
+
+"Why, of course they'll all fall in love with you, Ruthie!" cried Agnes,
+with assurance. "Who wouldn't? But that old Pepperpot is another
+proposition."
+
+"Perhaps she is a whole lot better than she appears," Ruth said mildly.
+"And I don't think we ought to call her 'Pepperpot.' Tess certainly has
+found her blind side."
+
+"Ah, of course! Tess is like you," rejoined Agnes. "She would disarm a
+wild tiger."
+
+"Oh! oh!" cried Neale, hearing this remark--and certainly what Agnes
+said was wilder than any tiger! "How would you go to work to disarm a
+tiger, Aggie? Never knew they had arms."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Smartie!"
+
+"I don't know how smart I am," said Neale. "I was setting here
+thinking----"
+
+"You mean you were _sitting_," snapped Agnes. "You're neither a hen nor
+a mason."
+
+"Huh! who said I was?" asked Neale.
+
+"Why," returned the girl, "a hen _sets_ on eggs, and a mason _sets_ the
+stone in a wall, for instance. You _sit_ on that seat, I should hope."
+
+"Oh, cricky! Get ap, Dobbin and Dewlap! What do you know about Aggie's
+turning critic all of a sudden?" cried Neale.
+
+"Alas for our learning!" chuckled Ruth. "A hen _sets_ only in colloquial
+language. To a purist she always _sits_--according to my English lesson
+of yesterday.
+
+"But you'd better see where you are turning to, young man," she went on,
+briskly. "Isn't yonder the road to Lycurgus Billet's place? He owns the
+chestnut woods."
+
+"We can go that way if you like," admitted Neale. "But I want to come
+around by the Ipswitch Curve on the interurban, either going or coming."
+
+"What for?" asked Ruth, while Agnes cried:
+
+"Oh, don't Neale! I never want to see that horrid place again."
+
+"I just want to," said Neale to Ruth. "Mr. Bob Buckham lives near there
+and I worked for him once."
+
+Until Neale's uncle, Mr. William Sorber, had undertaken to pay for the
+boy's education, Neale had earned his own living after he had run away
+from the circus.
+
+"Oh, don't, Neale!" begged Agnes, faintly.
+
+"Why shouldn't we drive back that way?" asked Ruth, surprised at her
+sister's manner and words. Ruth did not know all about Agnes' trouble
+over the raid on the farmer's strawberry patch. "But let's drive direct
+to the chestnut woods now."
+
+"All right," said Neale, turning the horses. "Go 'lang! We'll have to
+stop at Billet's house and ask permission. He is choice of his woods,
+for there's a lot of nice young timber there and the blight has not
+struck the trees. He's awfully afraid of fire."
+
+"Isn't that Mr. Billet rather an odd stick?" asked Ruth. "You know, we
+never were up this way but once. We saw him then. He was lying under a
+wall with his gun, watching for a chicken hawk. His wife said he'd been
+there all day, since early in the morning. _She_ was chopping wood to
+heat her water for tea," added Ruth with a sniff.
+
+Neale chuckled. "Lycurgus ought to have been called 'Nimrod,'" he said.
+
+"Why?" demanded Agnes.
+
+"Because he is a mighty hunter. And that is really all he does take any
+interest in. I bet he'd lie out under a stone wall for a week if he
+thought he could get a shot at a snowbird! And he'd shoot it, too, if he
+had half a chance. He never misses, they say."
+
+"Such shiftlessness!" sniffed Ruth again. "And his wife barefooted and
+his children in rags and tatters."
+
+"That girl was a bright-looking girl," Agnes interposed. "You know--the
+one with the flour-sack waist on. Oh, Neale!" she added, giggling, "you
+could read in faint red marking, 'Somebody's XXXX Flour,' right across
+the small of her back!"
+
+"Poor child," sighed Ruth. "That was Sue--wasn't that her name? Sue
+Billet."
+
+"A scrawny little one with a tip-tilted nose, and running bare-legged,
+though she must be twelve," said Neale. "I remember her."
+
+"Poor child," Ruth said again.
+
+There were other things to arouse the oldest Corner House girl's
+sympathy about the Billet premises when the picnicking party arrived
+there. Two lean hounds first of all charged out from under the house to
+attack Tom Jonah.
+
+"Oh!" cried Dot. "Stop them! They'll eat poor Tom Jonah up, they are so
+hungry."
+
+Tess, too, was somewhat disturbed, for the hounds seemed as savage as
+bears. Tom Jonah, although slow to wrath, knew well how to acquit
+himself in battle. He snapped once at each of the hounds, and they fled,
+yelping.
+
+"And serves 'em just right!" declared Agnes. "Oh! here comes Mrs.
+Lycurgus."
+
+A slatternly woman in a soiled wrapper, men's shoes on her stockingless
+feet and her black, stringy hair hanging down her back, came from around
+the corner of the ramshackle, tumble-down house.
+
+"Why--ya'as; I reckon so. You ain't folks that'll build fires in our
+woodlot an' leave 'em careless like. Lycurgus, he's gone up that a-way
+hisself. There's a big eagle been seed up there, an' he's a notion he
+might shoot it. Mebbe there's a pair on 'em. He wants ter git it,
+powerful. Sue, she's gone with her pap. But I reckon you know the way?"
+
+"Oh, yes, ma'am," said Neale. Then, after he had driven on a few yards,
+he said to the girls: "Say! wouldn't it be great to catch sight of that
+eagle?"
+
+"An eagle?" repeated Agnes, in doubt. "Do you suppose there really is an
+eagle so near to civilization?"
+
+"You don't call Mrs. Lycurgus really civilized?" chuckled Neale. "And
+the Billets and Bob Buckham are the nearest neighbors for some miles to
+his eagleship, in all probability."
+
+"I suppose it is lonely up here," admitted Ruth.
+
+"This is a hilly country. There are plenty of wild spots back on the
+high ground, within a very few miles of this spot, where eagles might
+nest."
+
+"An eagle's eyrie!" said Agnes, musingly. "And maybe eaglets in it."
+
+"Like Mrs. Severn wears on her hat," said Dot, suddenly breaking in.
+
+"What! Eaglets on her hat?" cried Agnes.
+
+"Eaglets to trim hats with?" chuckled Neale. "That is a new style, for
+fair."
+
+"Oh, dear me," said Ruth, with a sigh. "The child means aigrets. Though
+I am sorry if Mrs. Severn is cruel enough to follow such a fashion.
+That's a different kind of bird, honey."
+
+"Anyway, there will not be young eagles at this time of year, I guess,"
+Neale added.
+
+"How would we ever climb up to an eyrie?" Tess asked. "They are in very
+inaccessible places."
+
+"As inac--accessible," asked Dot, stumbling over the big word, "as Mrs.
+MacCall's highest preserve shelf?"
+
+"Quite," laughed Ruth.
+
+The road through which they now drove was really "woodsy." The leaves
+were changing from green to gold, for the sap was receding into the
+boles and roots of the trees. The leaves seemed to be putting on their
+bravest colors as though to flout Jack Frost.
+
+Squirrels darted away, chattering and scolding, as the party advanced.
+These little fellows seemed to suspect that the woods were to be raided
+and some of the nuts, which they considered their own lawful plunder,
+taken away.
+
+The Corner House girls, with their boy friend, did indeed find a goodly
+store of nuts. They camped in a pretty glade, where there was a spring,
+and tethered the horses where they could crop some sweet clover. And
+Neale built a real Gypsy fire, being careful that it should do no
+damage; and three stout stakes were set up over the blaze, a pot hung
+from their apex, and the tea made.
+
+And the chestnuts! how they rained down when Neale climbed up the trees
+and swung himself out upon the branches, shaking them vigorously. The
+glossy brown nuts came out of their prickly nests in a hurry and were
+scattered widely on the leaf-carpeted ground.
+
+Sometimes they came down in the burrs--maybe only "peeping" out; and
+getting them wholly out of the burrs was not so pleasant an occupation.
+
+"Why is it," complained Dot sucking her fingers, stung by the prickly
+burrs, "that they put such thistles on these chestnuts? It's worse than
+a rosebush--or a pincushion. Couldn't the nuts grow just as good without
+such awfully sharp jackets on 'em?"
+
+"Oh, Dot," said Tess, to whom the smallest Corner House girl addressed
+this speech. "I suspect the burrs are made prickly for a very good
+reason. You see, the chestnuts are not really ripe until the burrs are
+broken open by the frost. Then the squirrels can get at them easily."
+
+"Well, I see _that_," agreed Dot.
+
+"But don't you see, if the little squirrels--the baby ones--could get at
+the chestnuts before they were ripe, they would all get sick, and have
+the stomach-ache--most likely be like children, boys 'specially, who eat
+green apples? You know how sick Sammy Pinkney was that time he got into
+our yard and stole the green apples."
+
+"Oh, I see," Dot acknowledged. "I s'pose you're right, Tess. But the
+burrs are dreadful. Seems to me they could have found something to put
+'round a chestnut besides just old prickles."
+
+"How'd they do it?" demanded Tess, rather exasperated at her sister's
+obstinacy. Besides, the "prickles" were stinging her poor fingers, too.
+"How do you suppose they could keep the little squirrels from eating the
+chestnuts green, then?"
+
+"We--ell," said Dot, thoughtfully, "they might do like our teacher says
+poison ought to be kept. She read us about how dangerous it is to have
+poison around--and I read some in the book about it, too."
+
+"But chestnuts aren't poison!" cried Tess.
+
+"They must be when they are green," declared the smaller girl,
+confidently, possessing just enough knowledge of her subject to make her
+positive. "Else the squirrels wouldn't have the stomach-ache. And you
+say they _do_."
+
+"I said they _might_," denied Tess, hastily.
+
+"Well, poison is a very dang'rous thing," went on Dot, pleased to air
+her knowledge. "It ought to be doctored at once and not allowed to run
+on--for _that's_ very ser'ous indeed. And we mustn't treat poison rough;
+it's li'ble to run into blood poison."
+
+"Oh!" gasped Tess, who had not had the benefits of "easy lessons in
+physiology" when she was in Dot's grade, that being a new study.
+
+"You ought to keep poison," went on Dot, nodding her dark little head
+vigorously, "in a little room under lock and key in a little bottle and
+the cork in so it can't get out, and hide the key and have a skeleton on
+the bottle and not let nobody go there!" and Dot came out, breathless
+but triumphant, with this complete and efficacious arrangement.
+
+The bigger girls had gathered a great heap of the brown nuts before the
+picnic dinner was served. Neale had done something beside shake down the
+nuts. He had stripped off great pieces of bark from the yellow birch
+trees and cut them into platters and plates on which the food could be
+served very nicely. Neale was so resourceful, indeed, that Ruth had to
+acknowledge that boys really were of some account, after all.
+
+When they sat down, Turk-fashion, around the tablecloth which had been
+spread, the oldest Corner House girl sighed, however: "But mercy! he
+eats his share. Where do you suppose he puts it all, Aggie?"
+
+"I wouldn't be unladylike enough to inquire," returned the roguish
+sister, with a toss of her head. "How dreadful you are, Ruth!"
+
+It was a very pleasant picnic. The crisp air was exhilarating; the dry
+leaves rustled every time the wind breathed on them; and the tinkle of
+the spring made pleasant music. Squirrels chattered noisily; jays
+shrieked their alarm; the lazy caw of a crow was heard from a distance.
+
+The tang of balsam was in the air and the fall haze looked blue and
+mysterious at the end of the aisles made by the rows of tall trees. It
+was after dinner that a seemingly well-beaten path attracted them, and
+the whole party, including Tom Jonah, started for a stroll.
+
+The path led them to an opening in the forest where a stake-and-rider
+fence was all that separated them from a great rolling pasture. In the
+distance were the craggy hills, where great boulders cropped out and the
+forest was thin and straggly.
+
+It was a narrow valley that lay before the young explorers. Directly
+opposite was a crag as barren as a bald head.
+
+"Look at the cloud shadow sailing over the field," said Ruth,
+contemplatively.
+
+Her remark might have passed without comment had not the shadow, thus
+mentioned, changed form and darted suddenly to one side.
+
+"Hi!" exclaimed Neale. "That's no cloud shadow."
+
+"Look! look!" squealed Tess. "See the aeroplane!"
+
+A flying machine had been exhibited at Milton only a few weeks before,
+and the aviator had done some fancy flying over the house-roofs of the
+town. Little wonder that Tess thought this must be another aeroplane,
+for the huge bird that swooped earthward cast a shadow quite as large as
+had the aeroplane she had seen.
+
+"The eagle!" exclaimed Neale. "Oh, look! look!"
+
+The whole party--even Tom Jonah--was transfixed with wonder as they
+observed a huge bird sail slowly across the valley toward them and
+finally alight upon a bare branch of a tall, dead pine at the edge of
+the field. There the eagle poised for a few moments, its wings half
+spread, "tip-tilting," as Agnes said, till he had struck the right
+balance. Then he settled more comfortably on his perch, turned his head
+till his harsh beak and evil eye were aimed over his shoulder, steadily
+viewing something in the field below him.
+
+The bird did not see the party of spectators at the boundary fence; but
+they quickly discovered the object which the bird of prey observed.
+
+"There! Oh, look there!" gasped Agnes. "_That thing's moving!_"
+
+"It's a girl!" murmured Ruth.
+
+"Sue Billet--as sure as you live," muttered Neale. "There's
+Lycurgus--over behind the fence--he's after the eagle!"
+
+"What a dreadful thing!" exclaimed Ruth, aloud. "Is he using his own
+child for bait! That's what he's doing! Oh, Neale! Oh, Agnes! He's sent
+that child out there to attract the eagle's attention," Ruth went on to
+cry. "What a wicked, wicked thing to do!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+BOB BUCKHAM TAKES A HAND
+
+
+Ruth's low cry was involuntary. She did not mean to frighten the little
+Corner House girls; but they saw and understood as well as the older
+spectators. Tess and Dot clung together and Dot began to whimper.
+
+"Oh, don't cry, Dot! Don't cry!" begged Tess.
+
+"That--that awful aigret!" gasped Dot, getting things mixed again, but
+quite as much frightened as though she were right. "It will bite that
+little girl."
+
+"No. We'll set Tom Jonah on him!" exclaimed Tess, bravely.
+
+"Hush!" exclaimed Neale, in a low, tense voice. "Lycurgus is going to
+shoot it."
+
+"Go right on, Sue!" they heard the hunter say to his little daughter, in
+a voice scarcely above a whisper, but very penetrating. "Walk right out
+in that there field. I got my eye on you."
+
+"You keep your eye on that ol' eagle, Pap--never mind watchin' me," was
+the faint reply of little Sue Billet.
+
+"Don't you have no fear," Lycurgus said in his sharp wheeze. "I'm
+a-gwine to shoot that fow-el. He's my meat."
+
+The eagle raised his wings slowly; they quivered and he stretched his
+neck around so that he could glare again at the trembling little girl.
+It was no wonder Sue was frightened, and stumbled, and fell into a bed
+of nettles, and then--screamed!
+
+"Drat the young 'un!" exclaimed Lycurgus, just as the eagle made an
+awkward spring into the air.
+
+But the bird did not fly away; instead it swooped around in a circle,
+displaying great strength and agility in its motion. It's wings spread
+all of six feet. They beat the air tremendously, and then the bird
+sailed low, aiming directly for the child just climbing out of the bed
+of nettles.
+
+It was plain that Lycurgus had not been quite ready for the eagle's
+swoop. He had to try for the bird, however. The screaming Sue could not
+extricate herself from the dangerous situation in which her father had
+placed her. Lycurgus shouldered his gun and pulled the trigger.
+
+He may have had a reputation for never missing his quarry; but his gun
+missed that time, for sure! Not a feather flew from the great bird. Its
+pinions beat the air so terribly that poor little Sue was thrown to the
+ground once more.
+
+Agnes shrieked. The two smaller girls were awestruck. Neale O'Neil
+fairly groaned. It seemed as though the child must fall a victim to the
+eagle's beak and claws.
+
+Its huge wings, beating the air, drowned most other sounds. Lycurgus
+struggled to slip another shell into his old-fashioned rifle. Somehow
+the mechanism had fouled.
+
+[Illustration: At the moment the eagle dropped with spread talons, the
+big dog leaped. Page 103]
+
+"Pap! Pap!" screeched the girl at last. "He's goin' to git me!"
+
+At that shrill and awful cry the man flung away his gun and leaped the
+rail fence into the open field. What he thought he might do with his
+bare hands against the talons and armed beak of the bird of prey, it
+would be impossible to say. But whatever fault might be found with
+Lycurgus Billet, he was no coward.
+
+Bare-handed, hatless, and as white as paper, the man ran toward his
+little girl. The shadow of the swooping eagle covered them both.
+
+Then it was that Tess Kenway awoke from her trance. She shrieked,
+suddenly: "Tom! Tom Jonah! Do, _do_ catch it! Tom Jonah! _Sic him,
+boy!_"
+
+The growling dog needed no second urging. He flung himself through the
+fence and dashed across the intervening space. At the moment the eagle
+dropped with spread talons, the big dog leaped.
+
+Tom Jonah's teeth gained a grip upon the bird's leg. The eagle screamed
+with pain and rage. Its wings beat the air mightily, and it rose several
+feet from the ground, carrying Tom Jonah with it!
+
+Lycurgus leaped in and seized Sue. With her clasped close to his chest
+he ran for the shelter of the woods.
+
+But the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil, with excited cries,
+followed in the wake of the lumbering eagle. It plowed across the field,
+rising and falling with alternate strokes of its wings. Tom Jonah seemed
+in a very precarious situation, indeed.
+
+The old dog had no idea of letting go his hold, however. When once his
+jaws were clamped upon an enemy, he was there to stay. Tess was wildly
+excited. Dot was crying frankly. Agnes called encouragement to Tom
+Jonah. Ruth and Neale were as anxious as the others for the safety of
+the old dog, but they saved their breath. All ran as hard as they could
+run after the eagle and Tom Jonah.
+
+For, scream and beat his wings as he might, the bird could not dislodge
+the dog. Half the time Tom Jonah was on the ground, and when he felt the
+earth he dragged back and tore at his feathered antagonist with an
+obstinacy remarkable.
+
+The eagle could not thrash Tom Jonah with his wings to any purpose; nor
+could he fix his talons in the dog, or spear him with his beak, while
+they both were in the air. As the huge bird sprang up the dog bounced
+into the air, too; but only for a moment or two at a time. The bird was
+growing weaker.
+
+Finally the eagle changed its tactics, and for a moment the two
+antagonists whirled over and over on the ground. How the feathers flew!
+In some way the bird's talons found the dog's flesh.
+
+It was then, when reckless Neale was trying to find a stone or club,
+that a hoarse voice was heard shouting:
+
+"Get away! stand back! I'm going to shoot that critter!"
+
+"Oh!" shrieked Tess Kenway, not at all the timid and mild little girl
+she usually was. "Oh! don't you dare shoot Tom Jonah!"
+
+There sounded the heavy explosion of a gun. The eagle screamed no more.
+Its great wings relaxed and it tumbled to the earth. Tom Jonah sprang
+away from the thrashing bird, which died hard. The man who had shot it
+strode in from the other side of the field.
+
+It was not Lycurgus Billet. It was an oldish man, with a big, bushy head
+of hair and whiskers. He carried his smoking gun in the hollow of his
+arm.
+
+"By cracky! I made a good shot that time, for a fact!" this stranger
+declared.
+
+But he was not a stranger to, at least, one of the picnic party. Neale
+O'Neil cried out: "Oh, Mr. Buckham, that was a fine shot! And just in
+the nick of time."
+
+Agnes almost fell over at this exclamation of her boy friend. She clung
+to Neale's jacket sleeve, whispering:
+
+"Oh, dear me! Let's not speak to him! Come, Neale! let's run. I--I am
+_so_ ashamed about those strawberries."
+
+"Step on that furderinest wing, young feller," said the big, old man to
+Neale. "He's dead--jest as dead as though he'd laid there a year. He's
+jest a-kickin' like a old rooster with his head off. Don't _know_ he's
+dead, that's all. Step on that wing; it'll keep him from thrashin'
+hisself to pieces," added the farmer, as Neale O'Neil obeyed him.
+
+The girls looked on in awe. Tom Jonah stood by, panting, his tongue out
+and his plume waving proudly.
+
+"That's a great dog," said Mr. Bob Buckham.
+
+"And---- Why, hullo, son! you used to work for us, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Buckham," replied Neale.
+
+"Ho, ho!" shouted the bushy-headed old man, spying Lycurgus and Sue
+coming from the edge of the woods. "I beat ye to it that time, Lycurgus.
+And what was little Sissy doing out there where the old eagle could git
+his eye on her? I swow! if it hadn't been for the dog, mebbe the eagle
+would ha' pecked her some--eh?"
+
+"The eagle would have carried her off--the poor little thing," said
+Ruth, indignantly.
+
+"No!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham.
+
+"I believe it would, sir," Neale said.
+
+"And that isn't the worst of it," went on the wrought up Corner House
+girl.
+
+"What ain't the worst of it, miss?" asked the farmer.
+
+"That poor little thing was sent out there by her father to attract the
+eagle."
+
+"What?" roared Bob Buckham, his great face turning red with anger and
+his deep-set eyes flashing. "You mean to tell me he set little Sissy for
+eagle bait?"
+
+He strode forward to meet Lycurgus Billet, leaving the dead bird behind
+him. The chagrined hunter smiled a sickly smile as big Bob Buckham
+approached.
+
+"The old gun went back on me that time--she sure did, Bob," Billet said.
+"I would ha' got that critter, else. Hullo! what's the matter?"
+
+For the farmer reached out a ham-like hand and seized the wiry Lycurgus
+by the shoulder, and shook him.
+
+"Hey! what you doin'?" the smaller man repeated.
+
+"I've a mind to shake the liver-lights out'n you, Lycurgus Billet!"
+declared the farmer. "To send little Sissy out to be eagle bait fer ye!
+I--I--That's the worst I ever heard of!"
+
+"Say!" sputtered Lycurgus. "What d'ye mean? I 'spected ter shoot the
+critter, didn't I?"
+
+"But ye didn't."
+
+"Just the same she warn't hurt. Air you, Sue?" demanded the little
+girl's father.
+
+Sue shook her head. She hadn't got over her scare, however. "My!" she
+confessed, "I thought he was a-goin' to grab me--I sure did! And he had
+sech a wicked eye."
+
+"You hear that?" demanded old Bob Buckham, fiercely, and Lycurgus shrank
+away from the indignant farmer as though he expected to feel the heavy
+hand again--and to sterner purpose this time.
+
+"You ain't no business with a young'un like Sissy--you ornery pup!"
+growled the old man in the culprit's ear. "I wish she was mine. You
+ain't fitten to own little Sissy."
+
+It was evident that the old farmer thought a good deal of the backwoods'
+child. Lycurgus said no further word. He walked over to the eagle and
+looked down at it.
+
+"He's a whopper!" he observed, smiling in his weak way at the Corner
+House girls and Neale O'Neil.
+
+Ruth only nodded coolly. Agnes turned her back on him, while the little
+girls stared as wonderingly at Lycurgus Billet as they would had he been
+a creature from another world.
+
+Bob Buckham and little Sissy, as he called her, were having a talk at
+one side. Something that shone brightly passed from the farmer's hand
+into the child's grimed palm.
+
+"Come on, Pap!" said Sue, bruskly. "Let's go home. These folks don't
+want us here."
+
+"Lazy, shiftless, inconsequential critter," growled Bob Buckham, coming
+back to the dead eagle, as Lycurgus and his daughter moved slowly away
+across the field.
+
+But then the old man's face cleared up quickly, though he sighed as he
+spoke.
+
+"That only goes to show ye! Some folks never have no chick nor child
+and others has got 'em so plentiful that they kin afford ter use 'em for
+eagle bait."
+
+His lips took a humorous twist at the corners, his eyes sparkled, and
+altogether his bewhiskered countenance took on a very pleasant
+expression. The Corner House girls--at least, Ruth and Tess and
+Dorothy--began to like the old farmer right away.
+
+"Got to take that critter home," declared Mr. Bob Buckham, as
+enthusiastic as a boy over his good luck. "Don't know how I come to lug
+my old gun along to-day when I started down this way. I never amounted
+to much as a hunter before. Always have left that to fellers like
+Lycurgus."
+
+"It was very fortunate for that poor little Sue that you had your
+rifle," Ruth said warmly.
+
+"Oh, no, ma'am," returned Mr. Buckham. "It was that dog of yourn saved
+little Sissy. But I reckon I saved the dog."
+
+"And we're awfully much obliged to you for _that_, sir," spoke up Tess.
+"Aren't we, Dot?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" agreed the smallest Corner House girl. "I thought poor Tom
+Jonah was going to be carried right up in the air, and that the aigrets
+would eat him!"
+
+"The _what_ would eat him?" demanded the farmer, paying close attention
+to what the little girls said, but puzzled enough at Dot's "association
+of ideas."
+
+Tess explained. "She means the young eagles. She expects the nest is
+full of hungry little eagles. It would have been dreadful for Tom Jonah
+to have been carried off just like a lamb. I've seen a picture of an
+eagle carrying away a lamb in his claws."
+
+"And many a one I reckon this big critter has stole," agreed the farmer.
+"Right out of my own flock, perhaps. But your dog was too big a load for
+him."
+
+"Now, son," he added, briskly to Neale, "you give me a h'ist with the
+bird. I'm going to take him home across my shoulders. Don't dare leave
+him here for fear some varmint will git him. I'll send the carcass right
+to town and have it stuffed." "Goodness!" murmured the startled Tess.
+"You don't _eat_ eagles, do you, sir?"
+
+"Ho, ho!" laughed the farmer. "No-sir-ree-sir! I mean we'll have the
+skin stuffed. When Mr. Eagle is mounted, you'll see him looking down
+from the top of that old corner cupboard of mine in the sittin'
+room--you remember it, Neale?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Neale, as he helped lift the heavy bird to the farmer's
+shoulders.
+
+"What are you and these young ladies doin' around here to-day, Neale?"
+asked Mr. Buckham.
+
+Neale told him. "Got a team, have you?" said the farmer. "Then drive
+right around to the house. You know the way, boy. I wanter git better
+acquainted with these little gals," and he smiled broadly upon Tess and
+Dot.
+
+Ruth was doubtful. Agnes shook her head behind the old man's back and
+pouted "No!"
+
+"I see that dog's ear is torn," went on Mr. Buckham. "I wanter doctor it
+a bit. These eagle's talons may be pizen as nightshade."
+
+So Ruth politely thanked Mr. Bob Buckham and said they would drive to
+his house. So near was the farmhouse, indeed, that Tess and Dot begged
+to walk with the farmer and so be assured that Tom Jonah should have
+"medical attention" immediately. Of course, the old dog would not leave
+the children to go with the strange man alone.
+
+"We can open the gates, too, for Mr. Buckham," said Tess.
+
+"Run along, then, children," the eldest sister said. "We will soon drive
+over with the chestnuts." Then she added rather sharply, but under her
+breath, to Agnes: "I don't see what your objection is to going to Mr.
+Buckham's house. I think he is a real nice old man."
+
+"Oh, I know he is," wailed her sister. "But you never stole his
+berries!"
+
+"Aggie's conscience is troubling her," chuckled Neale O'Neil. "But don't
+you fret, Aggie. Old Bob Buckham won't know that _you_ were one of the
+raiders last May."
+
+"Of course he will. When he knows my name. Didn't he send my name to Mr.
+Marks with the others?"
+
+"Did he?" returned Neale. "I wonder!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SOMETHING ABOUT OLD TIMES
+
+
+By the time Tess and Dot Kenway arrived at the rambling old farmhouse at
+Ipswitch Curve, where Mr. Buckham lived, they were as chatty and chummy
+with the man who had shot the eagle as though he were a life-long
+friend.
+
+Without any doubt Mr. Bob Buckham loved children--little girls
+especially. And Mrs. Bob Buckham loved them, too.
+
+There was a big-armed, broad-shouldered country girl in the wide, clean
+kitchen into which the children were first ushered. She was the
+maid-of-all-work, and she welcomed Tess and Dot kindly, if she did scold
+Mr. Buckham for tracking up her recently scrubbed floor with his muddy
+boots.
+
+"Now, you jest hesh, Posy," he told her, good-naturedly. "You know you
+wouldn't have work enough to keep you interested, if 'twarn't for me.
+Where's marm?"
+
+"In the sittin' room, Mr. Buckham--and don't you darst to go in there
+without scrapin' your feet. And _do_ put that nasty, great bird down
+outside."
+
+"Don't darst to," said Mr. Buckham. "The dogs'll tear it to pieces. I
+wanter fix this Tom Jonah's ear. He's a brave dog, Posy. If it hadn't
+been for him, I swow! Lycurgus Billet's Sue would have been kerried off
+by this old eagle," and he told the wondering girl about the adventure.
+
+"Now, you take these little gals in to marm, while I fix up Tom Jonah,"
+Mr. Buckham urged.
+
+So Tess and Dot were ushered into the sitting room by the big girl,
+Posy. Mrs. Buckham was not likely to be found anywhere but in her chair,
+poor woman, as the children very soon learned. She was a gentle,
+gray-haired, becapped old lady who never left her chair, saving for her
+bed at night. She was a paralytic and could not walk at all; but her
+fingers were busy, and she was fairly surrounded by bright colored
+worsteds and wools, finished pieces of knitting and crocheting, and
+incompleted work of like character.
+
+Out of this hedge of bright-hued fancy-work, Mrs. Buckham smiled upon
+the smaller Corner House girls quite as warmly as did Mr. Buckham
+himself.
+
+"I do declare! this is a pleasure," she cried, drawing one little girl
+after the other to her to be kissed. "Little flower faces! Aren't they,
+Posy? Wish I had a garden full o' them--that I do!"
+
+"My mercy, Mrs. Buckham! I'm glad you ain't," laughed the maid. "Not if
+they all favored Mr. Buckham and brought as much mud in on their feet as
+he does."
+
+"Never mind, Posy," cried the very jolly invalid. "_I_ don't track up
+your clean floors--and that's a blessing, isn't it?"
+
+Dot looked rather askance at the bright-colored afghan that hid the
+crippled legs of the good woman. The legs were so still, and the afghan
+covered them so completely, that to the little girl's mind it seemed as
+though she had no lower limbs at all!
+
+She and Tess, however, were soon quite friendly with the invalid. Posy
+bustled about between kitchen and sitting room, laying a round table in
+the latter room for tea for the expected guests. Mr. Buckham, having
+scraped his boots, came in.
+
+"Well, how be ye, Marm?" he asked his wife, kissing her as though he had
+just returned from a long journey.
+
+"Just the same, Bob," she replied, laughing. "I ain't been fur from my
+chair since you was gone."
+
+Mr. Buckham chuckled hugely at this old pleasantry between them. They
+both seemed to accept her affliction as though it were a joke, or a
+matter of small importance. Yet Mrs. Buckham had been confined to her
+chair and her bed for twenty years.
+
+Before Ruth and Agnes, with Neale O'Neil, reached the farmhouse, driving
+over from Lycurgus Billet's chestnut woods, Tess and Dot were having a
+most delightful visit. Dot was amusing Mrs. Buckham with her chatter,
+and likewise holding a hank of yarn for the invalid to wind off in a
+ball; while Tess, of course, had got upon her favorite topic of
+conversation, and was telling Mr. Buckham all about the need of the
+Women's and Children's Hospital, and about Mrs. Eland.
+
+"You see, she's such an awfully nice lady--and so pretty," said Tess,
+warmly. "It would be an awful thing if she had to go away--and she
+hasn't any place to go. But the hospital's _got_ to have money!"
+
+"Eland--Eland?" repeated Mr. Bob Buckham, reflectively. "Isn't that name
+sort o' familiar, Marm?" he asked his wife.
+
+"The Aden girl married an Eland," said Mrs. Buckham, quickly. "He died
+soon after and left her a widow. Is it the same? Marion Aden?"
+
+"Mrs. Eland's name is Marion," said Tess, confidently. "She signed it to
+a note to us. Didn't she, Dot?"
+
+"In the apple," replied Dot, promptly.
+
+"What does the child mean--'in the apple'?" queried the laughing Mrs.
+Buckham.
+
+"That's how she sent us our invitation to her party," said Dot.
+
+"Only to an afternoon tea, child!" exclaimed Tess, quickly. "That isn't
+a party." Then she explained to Mrs. Buckham about the apples and the
+one that came back with the note inside. Meanwhile the farmer was very
+quiet and thoughtful.
+
+"So," finished Tess, breathlessly, "we're going to stop at the hospital
+on our way home from school next Monday afternoon. Aren't we, Dot?"
+
+"Ye-es," said the smaller girl, this time doubtfully. "If Mrs. MacCall
+finishes my Alice-doll's new cloak. Otherwise she can't go, and of
+course I can't go without her. She hasn't a thing fit to wear, now it's
+come fall."
+
+"You ask Mrs. Eland," broke in Mr. Buckham, "if she happens to be any
+relation to Lemuel Aden."
+
+"Now, Bob!" said his wife in an admonitory undertone, "never mind raking
+up dead and gone happenings."
+
+"But I'm just curious--just curious," said the farmer. "Nothing to be
+done now about it----"
+
+"Bob!"
+
+"Well," subsided the farmer, "a man can't help thinkin' about money that
+he's lost. And that five hundred dollars was stole from us as sure as
+you're alive to-day, Marm."
+
+"Never mind," his wife said lightly. "You've earned several five
+hundreds since that happened--you know you have, Bob Buckham. What's the
+good of worrying?"
+
+"Ain't worrying," denied the farmer, quickly. "But I do despise a thief.
+I was brought up on the motter:
+
+    "''Tis a sin
+      To steal a pin;
+      'Tis a greater
+      To steal a' 'tater!'
+
+Ain't that so, children?" he concluded, chuckling.
+
+Now, Ruth and Agnes were being ushered into the room by the broadly
+smiling Posy just as Mr. Buckham recited this old jingle. Agnes flushed
+to the roots of her hair, and then paled with alarm. She expected, then
+and there, to be accused with the heinous offence of having picked
+strawberries without permission in Mr. Bob Buckham's field!
+
+"Oh! what a pretty girl!" cried the invalid. "Come here, my dear, and
+let me pinch those cheeks. You need not blush so; I'm sure you've been
+told you were pretty before--and I hope it hasn't spoiled you," and Mrs.
+Buckham laughed heartily.
+
+"I should know you were little Theresa's sister," continued the lady, as
+Agnes tremblingly approached. "She will be just such another when she
+gets to be as old as you, I am sure.
+
+"And of course, this is Ruth," and she welcomed the oldest Corner House
+girl, too. "Four such splendid girls must make their mother's heart
+glad."
+
+"I hope we did make her glad when she was with us," Ruth said quietly.
+"But we have no mother now; and no father."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" cried the invalid, in quite a shocked tone. "I had no
+idea----"
+
+"We miss our mother and our father. Even Dot can remember them both,"
+said Ruth, still calmly. "But it happened so long ago that we do not cry
+about it any more--do we, girls?"
+
+As the oldest sister spoke, the other three seemed to be involuntarily
+drawn to her. Dot took one hand and snuggled it against her soft, dark
+cheek. Tess put both arms about Ruth's neck and warmly kissed her. Agnes
+already had her arm around her elder sister's waist.
+
+"I see," said Mrs. Buckham, with sudden appreciation. "The others do not
+miss the lost and gone mother, for a very good reason. I am sure you
+have done your duty, Ruth Kenway."
+
+"I have tried to," Ruth said simply. "And they have all been good
+children, and helped."
+
+"I ain't a doubt of it--I ain't a doubt of it," repeated Mrs. Buckham,
+briskly.
+
+Agnes was watching the changing expression of the old lady's face,
+wondering if--as Neale had said--Mr. Buckham could not write, the
+invalid had sent in the list of girls' names to the principal of the
+Milton High. The old farmer himself might be unlettered; but Mrs.
+Buckham, Agnes was sure, must have had some book education.
+
+Right at the invalid's hand, indeed, were two shelves fastened under the
+window sill, filled with books--mostly of a religious character. And
+their bindings showed frequent handling.
+
+Posy brought in the steaming tea urn. "Come on now, folks," said Mrs.
+Buckham. "I'm just a honin' for a cup of comfort. That's what I call it.
+Tea is my favorite tipple--and I expect I'm just as eager for it as a
+poor drunkard is after liquor. Dear me! I never could blame them that
+has the habit for drink. I love my cup of comfort too well."
+
+Posy was putting Tess and Dot into their chairs. The farmer awoke from
+his brown study, got up, stretched himself, and, with a smile, wheeled
+his wife's chair to the table.
+
+"There ye be, Marm," he said. "All right?"
+
+"All right, Bob," she assured him.
+
+"Yes," the farmer said, turning to the children with a broader smile,
+"you ask your friend, Mrs. Eland, if she's related to Lemuel Aden. Seems
+to me she is his brother Abe's darter. Lem was a sharper; but Abe was a
+right out an' out----"
+
+"Now, Bob!" interposed his wife. "That's all gone and done for."
+
+"Well, so 'tis, Marm. But I can't never forget it. I was a boy and my
+marm was a widder woman. The five hundred dollars was all we had--every
+cent we had in the world," he added, looking about at the interested
+faces of his visitors.
+
+"Abe Aden was a lawyer, or suthin' like that. He was a dabster at most
+things, includin' horse-tradin'. My father had put all the money he had
+in the world in Abe's hands, in some trade or other. We tried to git it
+back when father was kill't so sudden in the sawmill.
+
+"Just erbout then Abe got inter trouble in a horse-trade. He was a good
+deal of a Gyp--so 'twas said. He left everything in Lem's hands and
+skedaddled out West. But he didn't leave no five hundred dollars in
+Lem's hands for _us_--no, sir!" and the old man shook his head
+ruminatively.
+
+"No, sir. He likely got away with that five hundred to pay his fare, and
+so escaped jail."
+
+"You don't know that, Bob," said his wife, gravely.
+
+"No. I don't know it. But I know that my marm and I suffered all that
+winter because of losin' the five hundred. I was only a boy. I hadn't
+got my growth. She overworked because of that rascal's dishonesty, and
+it broke her down and killed her. I loved my marm," he added simply.
+
+"'Course you did--'course you did, Bob," said his wife, briskly. Then
+she smiled about at the tableful of young folk, and confessed: "He begun
+callin' _me_ 'marm,' like he did his mother, right away when we was
+married. She'd been dead since he was a little boy, and I considered it
+the sweetest compliment Bob could pay me. I've been 'marm' to him ever
+since."
+
+"You sure have," declared Mr. Buckham, stoutly. "But that ain't bringin'
+my poor old marm back--nor the five hundred dollars. We never did hear
+direct from Abe Aden; but by and by a leetle gal wandered back here to
+the neighborhood. Said she was Abe's darter. He and her mother was lost
+in a big fire in some Western city; and she'd lost her sister, too."
+
+"Poor child!" sighed the old lady. "You couldn't hold a grudge against
+the child, Bob."
+
+"Who says I done so?" demanded the farmer. "No, sir! I never even seed
+the child more'n once or twice. But I know her name was Marion. And I
+heard her tell her story. The Chicago fire was a nine days' wonder, and
+this fire the gal's parents were lost in, was much similar, I should
+say. She'd seen her father and mother and the house they lived in, all
+swept away together--in a moment, almost. She and her sister escaped,
+but were separated in the refugees' camp and she couldn't never find the
+other child again. This Marion was old enough to remember about her
+Uncle Lem, and where he used to live; so the Relief Committee sent her
+here--glad ter git rid of her on sech easy terms, I s'pose. But Lem Aden
+had drapped out o' sight before then, and none of us folks knowed where
+he'd gone to."
+
+"And that little girl was Mrs. Eland?" Ruth ventured to ask, for the
+farmer's remembrances of old times did not interest the little girls.
+Posy was heaping their plates with good things to eat. The picnic dinner
+in the woods had been forgotten.
+
+"Yes. I reckon so," Mr. Buckham said, in answer to Ruth's inquiry. "She
+was kep' to help by some good people around here--just as we took Posy,
+marm and me. The child drifted away later. She got some schoolin'. I
+guess she went to a hospital and l'arned to be a nurse. Then she married
+a man named Eland, but he was sickly. I dunno as she ever did see her
+Uncle Lem."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE STRAWBERRY MARK
+
+
+Agnes Kenway had never been so uncomfortable in her life as she was
+sitting at that pleasant tea-table, at which the invalid, Mrs. Buckham,
+presided. And for once her usually cheerful tongue was stilled.
+
+"What's the matter with Aggie?" asked Neale O'Neil. "Lost your tongue?"
+
+"I believe our pretty one is bashful," suggested Mrs. Buckham, smiling
+upon the next to the oldest Corner House girl.
+
+"Well, if she is, it's the first time," murmured Neale. But he said no
+more. Neale suddenly guessed what was troubling his girl friend, and had
+tact enough to keep his lips closed.
+
+Agnes was just as honest a girl at heart as ever breathed. She did not
+need the reminder of the farmer's old doggerel to keep her from touching
+that which was not hers.
+
+At the time when she had led the raid of the basket ball team and their
+friends upon Mr. Buckham's strawberry patch, she had been inspired by
+mere thoughtlessness and high spirits. The idea that she was
+trespassing--actually stealing--never entered her helter-skelter
+thoughts until afterward.
+
+The field was so large, there were so many berries, and she and her
+mates took so few, that it really did not seem like stealing to
+thoughtless Agnes--no, indeed! It was just a prank.
+
+And now to hear Bob Buckham express his horror of a thief!
+
+"And that's what I am!" thought the bitterly repentant Agnes. "No, not a
+thief _now_. But I was at the time I took those berries. I am awfully
+sorry that I did such a thing. I--I wish I could tell him so."
+
+That thought took fast hold upon the girl's mind. Her appreciation of
+the enormity of her offence had not been so great before--not even when
+Mr. Marks, the principal of the Milton High School, was talking so
+seriously to the girls about their frolic.
+
+Then she had felt mainly the keen disappointment the punishment for her
+wrong-doing had brought. Not to be allowed to take part in the play
+which she felt sure would be enacted by the pupils of the Milton schools
+for the benefit of the Women's and Children's Hospital was a bitter
+disappointment, and that thought filled her mind.
+
+Now she felt a different pang--far different. Shame for her act, and
+sorrow for the wrong she had done, bore Agnes' spirit down. Little
+wonder that she was all but dumb, and that her flowerlike face was
+overcast.
+
+Tea was over and Mr. Buckham drew his wife's wheel-chair back to its
+usual place by the window. The light was fading even there, and Ruth
+said that they must start for home.
+
+"Don't run away, sis," said the old farmer. "Marm and me don't have many
+visitors like you; an' we're glad to have ye."
+
+"I fear that Mrs. MacCall will be afraid for us if we remain away much
+after dark," Ruth said cheerfully. She had already explained about Mrs.
+MacCall and Aunt Sarah, and even about Uncle Rufus.
+
+"But we all have had such a nice time," Ruth added. "I know we shall
+only be too glad to come again."
+
+"That's a good word," declared the invalid. "You can't come too often."
+
+"Thank you," said Ruth. "If Neale will get the ponies ready----"
+
+"And while he's doin' so, I'll take a look at that dog's ear again,"
+said Mr. Buckham, cheerfully. "Wouldn't want nothin' bad to happen to
+such a brave dog as Tom Jonah."
+
+"He's layin' out behind my kitchen stove, and he behaves like a
+Christian," Posy declared.
+
+"He's a gentleman, Tom Jonah is," said Tess, proudly. "It says so on his
+collar," and she proceeded to tell the good-natured maid-of-all-work Tom
+Jonah's history--how he had first come to the old Corner House, and all
+that he had done, and how his old master had once unsuccessfully tried
+to win him back.
+
+"But he wouldn't leave us at all. Would he, Dot?" she concluded.
+
+"Of course not," said the smallest girl. "Why should he? Aren't we just
+as nice to him as we can be? And he sleeps in the kitchen when it's
+cold, for Mrs. MacCall says he's too old to take his chances out of
+doors these sharp nights."
+
+"That's very thoughtful of your Mrs. MacCall, I do allow," agreed the
+jolly invalid. "And do you suppose she will get your doll's cloak done
+in time for your call on Mrs. Eland?"
+
+"My Alice-doll's cloak? I do hope so," said Dot, with a sigh of anxiety.
+
+"Wouldn't you go to call on the lady without her, if the cloak shouldn't
+be done?" asked the farmer's wife, much amused.
+
+"Oh, no! I couldn't do that," said Dot, gravely. "You see, I promised
+her."
+
+"Who, Mrs. Eland?"
+
+"No, ma'am. My Alice-doll. I told her she should go with us. You see,"
+said the smallest Corner House girl, "she was with us when we made the
+acquaintance of Mrs. Eland--Tess and me. And my Alice-doll liked her
+just as well as Tess and me. So there you are!"
+
+"I see," agreed Mrs. Buckham, quite seriously. "You couldn't disappoint
+the child."
+
+"Oh, no indeed!" said Dot. "I wouldn't want to! You see--she's not very
+strong. She hasn't been since that time she was buried alive."
+
+"Buried alive!" gasped the lady in horror and surprise.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. With the dried apples."
+
+"Buried with dried apples?" repeated Mrs. Buckham, her wonder growing.
+"What for?"
+
+"It was a most awful cat's-triumph," said Dot, shaking her head, and
+very, very solemn, "and it makes my Alice-doll very nervous even to hear
+it talked about. If she were here I wouldn't mention it----"
+
+"What? _What_ did you say, child?" gasped Mrs. Buckham. "About a cat, I
+mean, my dear?"
+
+"She means 'catastrophe,'" said Tess, coming to the rescue. "I really
+wish, Dot Kenway, that you wouldn't use words that you can't use!"
+
+Mrs. Buckham's mellow laughter rang out and she hugged the smallest
+Corner House girl close to her side.
+
+"Never mind, honey," she said. "If you want to make up a new word, you
+shall--so there!"
+
+Meanwhile Agnes had followed the farmer out into the big kitchen. The
+old man sat in a low chair and pulled Tom Jonah tenderly between his
+huge knees, till the dog laid his muzzle in his lap, looking up at the
+man confidingly out of his big, brown eyes.
+
+Mr. Buckham had put on a pair of silver-bowed spectacles and had the
+salve-box in his hand. He laid the badly torn ear carefully upon his
+knee and began to apply the salve with a gentle, if calloused,
+forefinger.
+
+"This'll take the pizen out, old feller," said the farmer, crooningly.
+
+Tom Jonah whined, but did not move. The application of the salve hurt
+the dog, but he did not pull away from the man's hand.
+
+"He sure _is_ a gentleman, jest as the little gal says," chuckled Bob
+Buckham.
+
+He looked so kindly and humorously up at Agnes standing before him, that
+the troubled Corner House girl almost broke out into weeping. She
+gripped her fingers into her palms until the nails almost cut the tender
+flesh. Her heart swelled and the tears stung her eyelids when she winked
+them back. Agnes was a passionate, stormy-tempered child. This was a
+crisis in her young life. She had always been open and frank, but nobody
+will ever know what it cost her to blurt out her first words to Mr. Bob
+Buckham.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Buckham! do you _hate_ anybody who steals from you?"
+
+"Heh?" he said, startled by her vehemence. "Do I hate 'em?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Goodness me, gal! I hope not. I'm a communin' Christian in our church,
+an' I hope I don't have no hatred in my heart against none o' my
+fellermen. But I hate some things that poor, weak, human critters
+does--yes, ma'am! 'Specially some of the ornery things Bob Buckham's
+done."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Buckham! _you_ never stole," blurted out Agnes.
+
+"Ya-as I have. That's why I hate stealin' so, I reckon," said the
+farmer, slowly.
+
+"Not, really?" cried Agnes.
+
+"Yep. 'Twas a-many year ago. Marm and me had jest come on this farm. She
+was young an' spry then, God bless her! And it was well she was. Bob
+Buckham wouldn't never have owned the place and stacked up the few
+dollars he has in bank, if it hadn't been for her spryness.
+
+"I'd jest got my first strawberry patch inter bearin'----"
+
+"Oh! Strawberries!" gasped Agnes.
+
+"Ya-as'm. Them's what I've made most of my money on. I only had a small
+patch. They was fust-class berries--most on 'em. They packed well, and
+we had ter put 'em into round, covered, quart boxes to ship in them
+days. I got a repertation with the local shipper for havin' A-number-one
+fruit.
+
+"Wal! Marm an' me was mighty hard up. We was dependin' on the _re_-turns
+from the strawberry crop to pay mortgage, int'rest and taxes. And one
+end of the strawberry patch--the late end--had the meachinest lookin'
+berries ye ever seen."
+
+Old Bob chuckled at the remembrance. His gaze sought the firelight
+flashing through the bars of the grate of the big cookstove.
+
+"Wal!" he said. "That was a bad time. We needin' the money so, and the
+berry crop likely to be short of what we figgered. Them little old
+barries at that last end of the patch began to ripen up fast; but I see
+they wouldn't bring me no price at all--not if the shipper seed 'em.
+
+"'Course, he was buyin' from a score o' farmers ev'ry day. My boxes
+didn't have my name on 'em. They had his'n. He furnished the boxes and
+crates himself.
+
+"The devil tempted me," said Bob Buckham, solemnly, "and I fell for him.
+'Course we had always to 'deacon' the boxes--we was expected to. The top
+layer of berries had to be packed in careful, hulls down, so's to make a
+pretty showin'.
+
+"But I put a lot of them meachin' little berries at the bottom of each
+box and covered 'em with big, harnsome fruit. They looked like the best
+o' the crop. I knew my man would never question 'em. And it made a
+difference of ten dollars to me on that one load.
+
+"I done it," said the farmer, blowing a big sigh. "I done it with as
+little compunction as I ever done anything in my whole endurin' life."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Buckham! Didn't you think it was wicked?"
+
+"If I did," he said, with a grin, "it didn't spile my appetite. Not
+_then_. Not that day. I seen the carload shipped and never said a word.
+I went home. I eat my dinner just as hearty as ever and made
+preparations to work the next day's load the same way. Ye see, marm,
+_she_ didn't know a thing about it.
+
+"Wal!" continued the old man, "it come bed-time and we went to bed. I
+was allus a sound sleeper. Minute my head touched the husk piller, that
+minute I begun ter snore. I worked hard and I slept hard.
+
+"But--funny thing--I didn't git to sleep. No reason--'parently. Wasn't
+worried. I was kinder tickled at what I'd done, and the slick way I'd
+done it. I never had cheated before to my knowledge; but I was happy at
+the thought of that extry ten dollars, and the other extry money that
+was ter foller."
+
+"And--and didn't your conscience trouble you?" asked Agnes, wonderingly.
+
+"Nope, not a mite. I was jest as quiet and contented as though they'd
+left a conscience out o' me when I was built," and the old man chuckled
+again, heartily.
+
+"Marm says she believes more folks lay awake at night because of empty
+stomachs than from guilty consciences, an' so she always has a plate of
+crackers by her side o' the bed. Wal! I lay as calm as a spring mornin';
+but after a while I gotter countin' sheep jumpin' through a gap in a
+stone-fence, and had jest about lulled myself ter sleep, when seems ter
+me there was a hand writin' on the wall opposite the foot of our bed. I
+didn't see the hand, mind you; but I seen the writin'. It was in good,
+big print-text, too, or I couldn't have read it at all--for you know I
+never had no schoolin', an' I kin jest barely write my name to this day.
+
+"But that print showed up plain as plain! And it was jest one
+word--kinder 'luminated on the wall. It was _strawberry_. That's all,
+jest _strawberry_. You'd think it would ha' been somethin' like _thief_
+or _cheat_. Nope. It was jest _strawberry_. But I had to lay there all
+night with my eyes propped open, seeing that word on the wall.
+
+"When daylight come it was still there. I seen it when I was dressin'. I
+carried it with me out to the stable. Everywhere I looked against a
+wall, I seed that word. If I hung my head and looked at the ground, it
+was there.
+
+"I knowed if what I'd done about those meachin' little berries was ever
+knowed in the community, like enough I'd never be called by my right
+name any more. They'd call me 'Strawberry Bob.' I knowed it. That was
+goin' to be my punishment fur stealin'."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bob!" groaned Agnes, much moved by his earnestness.
+
+"It's my belief," said old Bob Buckham, "that we don't hafter wait till
+the hereafter ter git our punishment for wrong-doin' here. I reckon most
+times we git it right here and now.
+
+"Wal! I went erbout all that forenoon seein' _strawberry_ marked up
+everywhere. I snum! it was right acrosst marm's forehead when I looked
+at her--and there warn't no other mark there in them days, you may be
+sure.
+
+"I started in to pack berries jest the same as I did the day before.
+Then, of a sudden, I says to myself, 'Bob Buckham, you derned thief!
+Stop it! Ten dollars a day won't pay you for bein' called "Strawberry
+Bob"!'
+
+"So I boxed them poor berries separate and I told the shipper what I'd
+done the day before. I told him to take ten dollars off my order. He
+grinned at me.
+
+"'There was a railroad wreck yesterday, Bob, and our car went to pot.
+I'll git full damages from the railroad company.'
+
+"'Not for them berries of mine, Silas,' I told him. He was Silas Wales.
+'You _de_-duct what my berries cost you in full, and I'll turn back my
+hull order to ye!'
+
+"He hummed and hawed; but he done it. He axed me was I havin' a hard
+time meetin' the int'rest on my mortgage, an' I told him the trewth.
+When the mortgage come due that year he come 'round and offered to let
+me have the money at a cheaper rate than I'd been payin', an' all the
+time I wanted. Ye see, that was a cheap way of gittin' a reperation for
+bein' honest, after all."
+
+"And didn't you see the strawberry mark after that?" sighed Agnes.
+
+"Nope. Nor they never called me 'Strawberry Bob,' though I've been
+raisin' more berries than most folks in this locality, ever since,"
+said Bob Buckham.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Buckham!" exclaimed Agnes. "I ought to be called 'Strawberry
+Agnes'!"
+
+"Heh? What for?" asked the startled farmer.
+
+"Because I stole berries! I stole them from you! Last May!" gulped the
+girl. "You know when those girls raided your field? I was one of them. I
+was the first one over the fence and picked the first berry. I--I'm
+awfully sorry; but I really didn't think how wrong it was at the time.
+And I wish I'd come to you and told you before, instead of waiting until
+the principal of our school--Mr. Marks--and everybody, knew about it."
+
+"Sho, honey!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham, softly. "Was you one o' them gals?
+I'd no idee. Wal! say no more about it. What you took didn't break me,"
+and he laughed. "And I won't tell nobody," he added, patting Agnes'
+shoulder.
+
+As Agnes dried her eyes before joining her sisters and Neale O'Neil at
+the door, she thought that it was rather unnecessary for the farmer to
+make that promise. When he had caused the list of girls' names to be
+sent to the school principal, he had assured her punishment.
+
+While Bob Buckham was saying to himself: "Now, that's a leetle gal after
+my own heart. She's a hull sight nicer than that other one. And she's
+truly repentant, too."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TEA WITH MRS. ELAND
+
+
+Neale was right. At the supper table at the old Corner House that night
+(the Saturday night supper was always a gala affair) Mrs. MacCall asked,
+anxiously:
+
+"What's the matter with you, boy? Are you sick?"
+
+"Oh, no, Mrs. MacCall. Do I look sick?" responded the white-haired boy,
+startled.
+
+"Must be somethin' the matter with you," said the housekeeper, with
+conviction. "Otherwise you wouldn't stop at only two helpings of beans
+and only four fishcakes. I'll have to speak to Mr. Con Murphy," she
+added grimly. "He'd better see that you have a good course of jalap.
+You're getting puny."
+
+Uncle Rufus chuckled unctiously from the background. "Dat boy," he
+murmured, "ain't sickenin' none. He done et a peck o' chestnuts, I
+reckon, already."
+
+In spite of Neale's "puny" appetite, they had a great chestnut roast
+that evening. Eva Larry and Myra Stetson came in unexpectedly, and the
+Corner House girls had a very hilarious time. Neale was the only boy
+present; but he was rather used, by this time, to playing squire to "a
+whole raft of girls."
+
+"And, oh, girls," cried the news-bearer, Eva, "what do you think? The
+School Board has voted to let us give _The Carnation Countess_. I heard
+it to-day. It's straight. The parts will be given out this next week.
+And, oh! poor us!"
+
+"Miss Lederer said we would have quite important parts in the play,"
+Ruth said complacently.
+
+"And _we_ can only look on," wailed Myra Stetson, quite as lugubriously
+as Eva.
+
+"And I'm going to be a bee--I'm going to be a bee!" Dot danced around
+the table singing this refrain.
+
+"I hope you won't be such a noisy one," Tess said admonishingly. "You're
+worse than a bumblebee, Dot Kenway."
+
+Agnes really felt too bad to say anything for a minute or two. It was
+true she felt better in her heart since she had confessed to Mr. Bob
+Buckham; but the fact that she could not act in the musical play was as
+keen a disappointment as lively, ambitious Agnes Kenway had ever
+suffered.
+
+For once Eva Larry's news was exact. It was announced to all grades of
+the Milton Public Schools on Monday morning that _The Carnation
+Countess_ was to be produced at the Opera House, probably during the
+week preceding Christmas, and all classes were to have an opportunity
+of helping in the benefit performance.
+
+A certain company of professional players, headed by a capable manager
+and musical director, were to take charge of the production, train the
+children when assembled, and arrange the stage setting. Half the
+proceeds of the entertainment were to go to the Milton Women's and
+Children's Hospital--an institution in which everybody seemed now to be
+interested.
+
+The fact that a certain little girl named Tess Kenway, had really set
+the ball of interest in motion, was quite forgotten, save by a few. As
+for the next to the youngest Corner House girl, she never troubled her
+sweet-tempered little self about it. "Oh! I'm so glad!" she sighed, with
+satisfaction. "Now my Mrs. Eland can stay."
+
+"What's that you say, Theresa?" Miss Pepperill's sharp voice demanded.
+
+Tess repeated her expression of gratitude.
+
+"Humph!" ejaculated the red-haired teacher. "So you are still interested
+in Mrs. Eland, are you? Have you seen her again?"
+
+"I am going to take tea with her this afternoon," said Tess, eagerly.
+"So is my sister, Dot."
+
+"You don't know if she has found _her_ sister yet?" asked Miss
+Pepperill, but more to herself than as though she expected a reply. "No!
+of course not."
+
+Tess hurried to meet Dot after school. She found her sister at the
+girls' gate of the primary department, hugging the Alice-doll (of
+course, in a brand new cloak) and listening with wide-eyed interest to
+the small, impish, black-haired boy who was talking earnestly to her.
+
+"And then I shall run away and sail the rollin' billers," he declared.
+"I hope they won't find old Pepperpot after I tie her to her
+chair--not--not from Friday afternoon till Monday mornin', when they
+open school again. That's what I hope. And by that time I can sail clean
+around the Cape of Good Hope to the Cannibal Islands, I guess."
+
+"Oh-ee!" gasped Dot. "And suppose the cannibals eat you, Sammy Pinkney?
+What would your mother say?"
+
+"She'd be sorry, I guess," said Sammy, darkly. "And so would my pop. But
+shucks!" he added quickly. "Pirates never get eat by cannibals. They're
+too smart."
+
+"That's all you know about it, Sammy Pinkney!" said Tess, sternly,
+breaking in upon the boasting of the scapegrace, who dearly loved an
+audience. "We met a man this summer that knew all about pirates--or
+_said_ he did; didn't we, Dot?"
+
+"Oh, yes. The clam-man," the smallest Corner House girl agreed. "And he
+had a wooden leg."
+
+"Did he get it bein' a pirate?" demanded Sammy.
+
+"He got it fighting pirates," Tess said firmly. "But the pirates got it
+worse. They got their legs mowed off."
+
+"We-ell. Huh! I guess it would be fun to have a wooden leg, at that,"
+the boy stoutly declared. "Anyway, a feller with a wooden leg wouldn't
+have growin' pains in it; and I have 'em awful when I go to bed nights,
+in _my_ legs."
+
+As the little girls went on to the hospital, Dot suddenly felt some
+hesitancy about going, after all. "You know, Tess, they do such _awful_
+things to folks in horsepistols!"
+
+"For pity's sake! stop calling it _that_," begged Tess. "And they don't
+do awful things in hospitals."
+
+"Yes they do; they take off folkses legs and arms and pull their teeth
+and----"
+
+"They don't!" denied Tess, flatly. "Not in this hospital, anyway. Here,
+they cure sick ladies and little children that are lame and sick. Oh!
+it's a be-a-utiful place!"
+
+"How do you know?" asked Dot, doubtfully.
+
+"Sadie Goronofsky's cousin was there," Tess said, with confidence.
+"Sadie went to see her--and she had jelly and oranges and farina
+puddings and all kinds of nice things to eat. Sadie knows, because she
+let her lick the tumblers and dishes. Besides, we're not going to be
+patients there," Tess declared. "We're only calling on Mrs. Eland."
+
+"I hope she has some of that nice farina pudding for tea," sighed Dot.
+"I'm fond of that."
+
+"Don't be a little gobbler, Dot, if she gives us anything good," said
+Tess, with her most elder-sisterly air. "Remember, we promised Ruth to
+be little ladies."
+
+"But goodness!" gasped Dot, "that doesn't mean that we can's eat _at
+all_, does it? I'm dreadful hungry. I always am after school and you
+know Mrs. MacCall lets us have a bite. If being a _lady_ means going
+_hungry_, I don't want to be one--so there, Tess Kenway!"
+
+This frank statement, and Dot's vehemence, might have caused some
+friction between the sisters (for of course Tess felt her importance,
+being the older, and having been particularly charged by Ruth to look
+after her sister) had they not met Neale O'Neil coming from the clothing
+store on High Street. He had a big bundle under his arm.
+
+"Oh, I know what you've got, Neale!" cried Tess. "Those are your new
+clothes."
+
+"You're a good little guesser, Tess Kenway," laughed the boy. "And it's
+a Jim-dandy suit. Ought to be. It cost me eight dollars of my hard
+earned lucre."
+
+"What's that?" demanded Dot, hearing something new.
+
+"Lucre is wealth. But eight dollars isn't much wealth, is it?" responded
+Neale, and passed on, leaving the two little girls at the steps of the
+main entrance to the hospital.
+
+There was no time now for discussing what Mrs. MacCall called "pros and
+cons," for the hall door was opened and a girl in a blue uniform and
+white cap beckoned the two little visitors up the steps.
+
+"You are the two children Mrs. Eland is expecting, aren't you?" she
+asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Tess, politely. "We have a 'pointment with her."
+
+"That's right," laughed the nurse. "She's waiting for you in her room.
+And the tea smells good."
+
+"Is--is there farina pudding?" asked Dot, hesitatingly. "Did you smell
+that, too?"
+
+Tess tugged at the smaller girl's coat and scowled at her reprovingly;
+but the pretty nurse only laughed. "I shouldn't be surprised if it were
+farina pudding, little girl," she said.
+
+And it was! Dot had two plates of it, besides her pretty cup of cambric
+tea. But Tess talked with Mrs. Eland in a really ladylike manner.
+
+In the first place the matron of the hospital was very glad to see the
+two Corner House girls. She did not have on her gray cloak or little
+bonnet with the white ruche. Dot's Alice-doll's new cloak was a
+flattering imitation of the cut and color of the hospital matron's
+outdoor garment.
+
+Mrs. Eland was just as pink-cheeked and pretty as ever indoors; but the
+children saw that her hair was almost white. Whether it was the white of
+age, or of trouble, it would have been hard to say. In either case Mrs.
+Eland had not allowed the cause of her whitening hair to spoil her
+temper or cheerfulness.
+
+That her natural expression of countenance was sad, one must allow; but
+when she talked with her little visitors, and entertained them, her
+sprightliness chased the troubled lines from the lady's face.
+
+"And--and have you found your sister yet, Mrs. Eland?" Tess asked
+hesitatingly in the midst of the visit. "I--I wouldn't ask," she
+hastened to say, "but Miss Pepperill wanted to know. She asked twice."
+
+"Miss Pepperill?" asked the matron, somewhat puzzled.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. Don't you 'member? She's my teacher that wanted me to learn
+the sovereigns of England."
+
+"Why, of course! I had forgotten," admitted Mrs. Eland. "Miss
+Pepperill."
+
+"Yes. And she's much int'rested in you," said Tess, seriously. "Of
+course, everybody is. They are going to make a play, and we're going to
+be in it----"
+
+"I'm going to be a bee," said Dot, in a muffled voice.
+
+"And it's going to be played for money so's you can stay here in the
+hospital and be matron," went on Tess.
+
+"Ah, yes, my dear! I know about that," said Mrs. Eland, with a very
+sweet smile. "And I know who to thank for it, too."
+
+"Do you?" returned Tess, quite unconscious of the matron's meaning.
+"Well! you see, Miss Pepperill's interested, too. She only asked me for
+the second time to-day if I'd seen you again and if you had found your
+sister."
+
+"No, no, my dear. I never can hope to find her now," said Mrs. Eland,
+shaking her head.
+
+"She was lost in a fire," said Dot, suddenly.
+
+"Why, yes! how did you know?" queried the lady, in surprise.
+
+"The man that shot the eagle said so," Dot replied. "And he wanted to
+know if you were much related to Lem--Lemon----"
+
+"_Lem-u-el!_" almost shrieked Tess. "Not Lemon, child. Lemuel Aden."
+
+"Oh, yes!" agreed the smaller girl, quite calmly. "That's just as though
+I said Salmon for Samuel--like Sammy Pinkney. Well! It isn't such a
+great difference, is it?"
+
+"Of course not, my dear," laughed Mrs. Eland. "And from what people tell
+me, my Uncle Lemuel must have been a good deal like a lemon."
+
+"Then he was your uncle?" asked Tess.
+
+"And--and was he real puckrative?" queried Dot. "For that's what Aunt
+Sarah says a lemon is."
+
+"He was a pretty sour man, I guess," said Mrs. Eland, shaking her head.
+"I came East when I was a little girl, looking for him. That was after
+my dear father and mother died and they had taken my sister away from
+me," she added. "But what about the man that shot the eagle? Who was
+he?"
+
+Tess told her about their adventures of the previous Saturday in the
+chestnut woods and the visit to the farmhouse afterward. Dot added:
+
+"And that eagle man don't like your Uncle Lem-u-el, either."
+
+"Why not?" asked Mrs. Eland, quickly, and flushing a little.
+
+Before Tess could stop the little chatterbox--if she had thought to--Dot
+replied: "'Cause he says your uncle's brother stole. He told us so. So
+he did, Tess Kenway--now, didn't he?"
+
+"You mustn't say such things," Tess admonished her.
+
+But the mischief was done. The matron lost all her pretty color, and her
+lips looked blue and her face drawn.
+
+"What do you suppose he meant by that?" she asked slowly, and almost
+whispering the question. "That my Uncle Lem's brother was a thief? Why,
+Uncle Lem only had one brother."
+
+"He was the one," Dot said, in a most matter-of-fact tone. "It was five
+hundred dollars. And the eagle man said he and his mother suffered for
+that money and she died--his mother, you know--'cause she had to work so
+hard when it was gone. Didn't she, Tess?"
+
+The conversation had got beyond Tess Kenway's control. She felt, small
+as she was, that something wrong had been said. By the look on Mrs.
+Eland's pale face the kind-hearted child knew that she was hurt and
+confused--and Tess was the tenderest hearted child in the world.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Eland!" she crooned, coming close to the lady who sat before
+her little stove, with her face turned aside that the children should
+not see the tears gathering in her eyes. "Oh, Mrs. Eland! I guess Mr.
+Buckham didn't mean that. Of course, none of _your_ folks could be
+thieves--of course not!"
+
+In a little while the matron asked the children a few more questions,
+including Mr. Buckham's full name, and how he was to be reached. She had
+not been in the neighborhood of Ipswitch Curve since she had first come
+from the West--a newly made orphan and with the loss of her little
+sister a fresh wound in her poor heart. So she had forgotten the
+strawberry farmer, and most of the other people in the old neighborhood
+where her father had lived before going West.
+
+Dot Kenway was quite unconscious of having involuntarily inflicted a
+wound in Mrs. Eland's mind and heart that she was doomed not to recover
+from for long weeks. As the sisters bade the matron good-bye, and
+started for the old Corner House, just as dusk was falling, Tess felt
+that her friend, Mrs. Eland, was really much sadder than she had been
+when they had begun their call.
+
+Tess, however, could not understand the reason for this.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+NEALE SUFFERS A SHORTENING PROCESS
+
+
+Naturally, Neale O'Neil stopped at the old Corner House on his way home
+with his new suit of clothes, to display them to Agnes and the others.
+In spite of Ruth's pronounced distaste for boys, she could not help
+having a secret interest in Neale O'Neil, and Agnes and Mrs. MacCall
+were not the only inmates of the Stower mansion that wanted to see the
+new suit on the boy, to be sure, before he appeared at church in it the
+next Sunday, that it fitted him properly.
+
+"There!" exclaimed the housekeeper, the moment Neale came back from the
+bathroom where he had made the change, and she saw how the gray suit
+looked. "I never knew that Merriefield, the clothier, to sell a suit but
+what either the coat was too big, the vest too long, or the pants out o'
+kilter in some way. Look at them pants!" she added, almost tragically.
+
+"Wha--what's the matter with them?" queried Neale, somewhat excited, and
+trying to see behind him. He was quite an acrobat, but he could not look
+down his spinal column. "Are they torn?"
+
+"Tore? No! Only tore off a mile too long," snorted Mrs. MacCall.
+
+"I declare, Neale," chuckled Agnes, "they are awfully long. They drag at
+the heel."
+
+"And I've got 'em pulled up now till I feel as though I was going to be
+cut in two," complained the boy.
+
+"Made for a man--made for a man," sniffed Aunt Sarah, who chanced to be
+in the sitting room. She did not often take any interest in Neale
+O'Neil--or appear to, at least. But she eyed the too long trousers
+malevolently. "Ought to be cut off two inches."
+
+"Yes; a good two inches," agreed Mrs. MacCall.
+
+"Leave the pants here, Neale, and some of us will get time to shorten
+them for you before next Sunday. You won't want to wear them before
+then, will you?" said Ruth.
+
+"Oh, no," returned Neale. "I'm not going to parade these to school,
+first off--just as Agnes does every new hair-ribbon she buys."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Smartie. Hair-ribbons aren't like suits of clothes, I
+should hope."
+
+"If they were," chuckled the boy, "I s'pose you'd have a pair of my
+trousers tied on your pigtail and hanging down your back."
+
+For that she chased him out of the house and they had a game of romps
+down under the grape-arbor and around the garden.
+
+"Dear me!" sighed Ruth, "Neale makes Aggie so tomboyish. I don't know
+what to do about it."
+
+"Sho, honey!" observed the housekeeper. "What do you care as long as
+she's healthy and pretty and happy? Our Aggie is one of the best."
+
+"Of course she is," rejoined the oldest Corner House girl. "But she's
+getting so big--and is so boisterous. And see what trouble she has got
+into about that frolic last spring. She can't play in this show that the
+others are going to act in."
+
+"That's too bad," said Mrs. MacCall, threading her needle. "If ever
+there was a girl cut out to be a mimic and actress, it's Aggie Kenway."
+
+"Don't for pity's sake tell her that!" cried Ruth, in alarm. "It will
+just about make her crazy, if you do. She is being punished for raiding
+that farmer's field--and it's right she should be punished----"
+
+"Mean man!" snapped Aunt Sarah, suddenly. "Those gals couldn't have eat
+many of his old berries."
+
+"Oh! I don't think Mr. Bob Buckham is mean," Ruth observed slowly,
+surprised to see Aunt Sarah take up cudgels for Agnes, whom the old lady
+often called "hare-brained." "And he is not punishing the girls of the
+basket ball team. Mr. Marks is doing that."
+
+"How did Mr. Marks know about it?" put in Aunt Sarah again.
+
+"Well, we suppose Mr. Buckham told him. So Mr. Marks said, I believe."
+
+"Mean man, then!" reiterated the old lady.
+
+That was her only comment upon the matter. But once having expressed her
+opinion of the strawberry man, nothing on earth could have changed Aunt
+Sarah's mind toward him.
+
+Agnes herself could not hold any hard feeling toward Mr. Buckham. Not
+after listening to his story, and being forgiven so frankly and freely
+her part in the raid on the strawberry patch.
+
+However much her sisters and the rest of the family felt for Agnes, the
+latter suffered more keenly as the week went by. The teachers in each
+grade took half an hour a day to read the synopsis of _The Carnation
+Countess_ to their pupils and to explain the part such pupils would have
+in the production. Also the training of those who had speeches or songs
+began. Of course, the preliminary training for the dance steps was left
+to the physical culture teachers on Friday afternoon.
+
+Agnes and her fellow culprits had to sit and listen to it all, knowing
+full well that they could have no part in the performance.
+
+"But just think!" Myra Stetson said, as they came out of school on
+Thursday. "Just think! Trix Severn is going to be Innocent Delight, that
+awfully nice girl who appears in every act. Think of it! She showed me
+the part Professor Ware gave her. Think of it--_Innocent Delight_!"
+
+"Oh! oh! oh!" gasped the chorus of unhappy basket ball players.
+
+"And she is every bit as guilty as we are," added Eva Larry.
+
+"Hush!" commanded Agnes. "Somebody'll hear you."
+
+"What if?"
+
+"We don't want Trix to say that we dragged her into our trouble when she
+was lucky enough to escape."
+
+"And I'd just like to know how she did escape," murmured Myra.
+
+"I think Mr. Marks is just as mean!" exclaimed Mary Breeze. "Miss
+Lederer said I had a good chance to be Bright Thoughts--she would have
+picked me for that part. And now I can't be in the play at all!"
+
+"Goodness, no! We can't even 'carry out the dead,' as my brother calls
+it," said another girl. "The door is entirely shut to us."
+
+"We all ought to have had a bright thought and have stayed out of that
+farmer's field," growled Eva. "Mean old hunks!"
+
+"Who?" cried Agnes.
+
+"That Buckham man."
+
+"No, he isn't!" said the Corner House girl, stoutly. "He's a fine old
+man. I've talked with him."
+
+"Oh, Agnes!" cried Myra. "Did you see him and try to beg off for us?"
+
+"No. I didn't do that. I didn't see that that would help us. Mr. Marks
+has punished us, not Mr. Bob Buckham."
+
+"I bet she did," said Mary Breeze, unkindly. "At least, I bet she tried
+to beg off for herself."
+
+"Now, Mary, you know you don't believe any such thing," Eva said. "We
+know what kind of girl Agnes Kenway is. She would not do such a thing.
+If she asked, it would be for us all."
+
+"No," said Agnes, shortly. "I did not do that. I just told Mr. Buckham
+how sorry I was for taking the berries."
+
+"Oh! What did he say, Aggie?" asked another girl.
+
+"He forgave me. He was real nice about it," Agnes confessed.
+
+"But he told on us. Otherwise we wouldn't be in this pickle," Mary
+Breeze said. "I don't call that nice."
+
+Agnes had it on her tongue to say that she did not believe Mr. Bob
+Buckham had sent the list of the culprit's names to Mr. Marks. Although
+she had said nothing more to Neale O'Neil about it, she knew that the
+boy was confident that the list of girls' names reached the principal of
+the Milton High through some other channel than that of the farmer.
+Agnes herself was assured that Mr. Buckham could not write. Nor did he
+and his wife seem like people who would do such a thing. Besides, how
+had the farmer obtained the girls' names, in the first place?
+
+Like Neale, too, Agnes had a feeling that Trix Severn somehow held the
+key to the mystery. But the Corner House girl would not say so aloud.
+Indeed, she had refused to acknowledge this belief to Neale.
+
+So now she kept still and allowed the other girls to do the talking and
+surmising.
+
+"Well, say what you may," Myra Stetson said at last. "Trix is one lucky
+girl. But she'll make a fine Innocent Delight----"
+
+"I don't think!" finished Eva. "Aggie is the one for that. A blonde. Who
+ever but Professor Ware would think of giving such a part to a dark
+girl?"
+
+"Let's not criticise," Agnes said, with a sigh. "We can't be in it, but
+we mustn't knock."
+
+"Right-oh!" said Myra, the cheery one. "We can go to the show and root
+for the others."
+
+"Well!" gasped Eva, "I'd like to see myself applaud Trix Severn as
+Innocent Delight! I--guess--not!"
+
+Although Ruth Kenway had not been selected for one of the speaking
+parts, she was quite as excited, nevertheless, as those who had been
+thus chosen. To keep one's mind upon lessons and _The Carnation
+Countess_ at the same time, was difficult even for the steady-minded
+Ruth.
+
+Dot went "buzzing" about the house like a veritable bee, singing the
+song that was being taught her and her mates. Tess' class were to be
+butterflies and hummingbirds. And--actually!--Tess had been given a part
+to speak.
+
+It was not very long, but it was of some importance; and her name,
+Theresa Kenway, would appear on the programme, as Swiftwing.
+
+It really was a mystery how Tess came to be chosen for the part. She was
+such a quiet, unobtrusive child that she never would be noticed in a
+crowd of other children of her age. But when Professor Ware, the musical
+director, came around to Miss Pepperill's class to "look the talent
+over," as he expressed it, he chose Tess without the least hesitancy for
+Swiftwing, the hummingbird.
+
+"You lucky dear!" Agnes said. "Well! at least the Kenways will be
+represented on the programme, if I can't do anything myself."
+
+Others, besides her immediate girl friends, said abroad that Agnes
+Kenway should be Innocent Delight. She was just fitted for the part.
+Miss Shipman, Agnes' old teacher, joined Miss Lederer in petitioning
+that the second oldest Corner House girl be given the part instead of
+Trix Severn. Trix, as a very pronounced brunette, would much better be
+given a part like Tom-o'-Dreams or Starlight.
+
+But Mr. Marks was obdurate. None of the girls who had entered into the
+reprehensible prank on the way back from the basket ball game at
+Fleeting could have any part in the performance of _The Carnation
+Countess_.
+
+"The farmer wrote me of their stealing the berries in such a strain that
+I fear he may take legal action against the parents of the foolish
+girls. It would be a lasting disgrace for any of the names of these
+girls to appear on our programme and in court proceedings at the same
+time," added the principal, though smiling at this conceit. "I do not
+see how I can change my ruling."
+
+But Agnes could not understand Mr. Bob Buckham. His letter to Mr. Marks
+must have been really vindictive; yet he did not seem to be at all the
+sort of person who would be so stern and uncompromising.
+
+Just what Neale had done toward getting his girl chum out of "the mess,"
+as he called it, Agnes did not know. At this time Neale suffered
+something which quite took up his attention.
+
+Those trousers that were too long!
+
+Saturday of this very busy week came, and Agnes, in dusting the
+sitting-room, found Neale's new gray trousers, neatly folded, on Ruth's
+sewing-table.
+
+"Oh, Ruthie!" she said. "You never fixed these pants."
+
+"I'm going to," her sister replied, and sat right down, there and then,
+carefully ripped the hem at the bottom of each trouser-leg, cut off two
+inches and stitched a new hem very carefully, putting back the
+stiffening and sewing on the "heel-strap" in a very workmanlike manner.
+
+Agnes ran to the kitchen for an iron and pressed the bottom of the
+trouser-legs to conform with the tailor's creases. "There! that's done,"
+she said, "and done right."
+
+It most certainly was done, whether right or not, the sequel was to
+show. After supper Neale started for home and Agnes gave him the new
+trousers.
+
+"I suppose you'll want to wear that fancy suit of yours to church
+to-morrow morning," she said.
+
+"Bet you!" he replied cheerfully. "Did you cut 'em down?"
+
+"Ruthie did," said Agnes.
+
+"Good for her! Tell her 'Thanks'!"
+
+As he went through the front hall Aunt Sarah put her head over the
+balustrade and asked:
+
+"Did you get them pants, boy?"
+
+She never by any possibility called Neale by his right name, and her
+voice now was just as sharp as ever.
+
+"Yes, ma'am--thank you," Neale said politely.
+
+In the kitchen Mrs. MacCall said, with a smile: "The pants all right,
+Neale?"
+
+"Sure they are," he declared, as he went out. Then he thought: "Dear me!
+seems as though everybody has a lot of interest in my new clothes."
+
+In the morning, early, when he put the suit on to display it to the old
+cobbler with whom Neale lived, the boy experienced a sudden and
+surprising interest in the trousers himself.
+
+The Corner House girls were at breakfast when, with a great clatter,
+Neale rushed in at the back door, through the kitchen, and into the
+dining room. He had on his new jacket and vest, but around his waist was
+tied a voluminous kitchen apron that Mr. Con Murphy wore when he
+cooked, which covered Neale to his insteps.
+
+"Dear me! what is the matter, Neale?" asked Ruth, with some vexation.
+
+"Matter? Matter enough!" cried the white-haired boy, very red in the
+face. "_Look what you did to my pants!_"
+
+He lifted the apron and displayed a wealth of blue yarn sock above his
+shoe-tops, and hose supporters as well.
+
+"For the good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated Aunt Sarah.
+
+"I _never_--in all my life!" cried Mrs. MacCall.
+
+"Ma soul an' body!" chuckled Uncle Rufus from the background. "Somebody
+done sawed off dat boy's pants too short, for suah!"
+
+"Dear suz!" added the housekeeper. "I'm sure I never did _that_."
+
+"You can't tell me 'twas _me_ done it," snapped Aunt Sarah.
+
+"Oh, Neale!" wailed Ruth. "I didn't cut off but two inches."
+
+"_You_, Niece Ruth?" exclaimed Aunt Sarah.
+
+"That's what _I_ done."
+
+"Oh, oh!" sharply cried Mrs. MacCall. "I cut 'em off, too!"
+
+Uncle Rufus almost dropped the dish of ham and eggs he was serving.
+Agnes shouted:
+
+"Oh, my heart alive! _Six inches off the bottom of those trousers!_ You
+have gone back into short pants, Neale O'Neil, that's sure!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE FIRST REHEARSAL
+
+
+So Neale O'Neil did not parade his new grey suit to church on that
+particular Sunday. Before the next came around Ruth had purchased
+another pair of trousers that fitted the white-haired boy, and the much
+cut-down pair was saved for patches.
+
+Something quite as interesting to him and the Corner House girls as a
+new suit, appeared at the First Church, however, which they all
+attended. Mr. Bob Buckham was at the morning service.
+
+The girls and Neale did not see the farmer till after the sermon. Then
+it was Agnes who first spied him, and she hurried back to where the old
+man was shaking hands with two or three of the elderly members of the
+congregation, who knew him.
+
+Mr. Buckham in his Sunday clothes looked no more staid and respectable
+than he did at home; and his eyes twinkled as merrily and his smile was
+just as kind as on week-days.
+
+"Hullo! here's one of my smart little friends," he exclaimed, welcoming
+Agnes. "How's your mind now, miss? Quite calm _and_ contented?"
+
+"I feel better than I did," confessed Agnes. "But I'm paying for my
+wrong-doing just the same. You know, Mr. Buckham, you said you thought
+we almost always got punished for our sins right here and now. We are.
+We girls who stole from you, you know."
+
+"Sho'! didn't I tell you to say no more about that?" cried the farmer.
+
+"But Mr. Marks, our principal, is punishing us," Agnes told him.
+
+"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham, innocently.
+
+"Eva and Myra and Mary and a lot of them, as well as myself, are
+forbidden to take any part in the play that is going to be given for the
+benefit of the Women's and Children's Hospital."
+
+"Wal, that's what I call rough!" the farmer admitted. "To my mind the
+berries weren't worth all this catouse over 'em. No, sir!"
+
+"But what did you _suppose_ he would do to us?" asked the Corner House
+girl, desperately.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mr. Marks."
+
+"Why--I dunno," said the puzzled farmer. "It re'lly is too bad he
+l'arned about you gals playin' that prank, ain't it?"
+
+Agnes stared at him. She could not understand this at all. And
+immediately Mr. Buckham went on to say: "The Women's and Children's
+Hospital, eh? That's where your friend, Mrs. Eland, is matron, isn't
+it?"
+
+"She is Tess' and Dot's friend," explained Agnes.
+
+"Wal! I come inter town pertic'lar to-day to see her. I got kind of a
+funny letter from her this week."
+
+"From Mrs. Eland?"
+
+"Yep. Marm said I'd better answer it in person. Word o' mouth ain't so
+ha'sh as a letter, ye know. And I ain't no writer myself."
+
+Had he said this to Ruth, for instance, she would doubtless have been
+interested enough to have asked some questions, and so discovered what
+trouble Dot's busy tongue had started. Agnes, however, only listened
+perfunctorily to the farmer's speech. Her mind was too perplexed about
+the letter which had reached Mr. Marks purporting to come from Mr.
+Buckham, in which he had complained of the girls stealing his berries.
+Mr. Buckham spoke as though he had no knowledge of the information
+lodged with the principal of the high school.
+
+Now Tess and Dot saw "the eagle man" and they came clamoring about him.
+Ruth came, too; and Neale followed. The boy had had no opportunity of
+talking to the farmer alone the day of the chestnutting party. Now he
+invited Mr. Buckham to go home with him to Mr. Con Murphy's for dinner,
+and the old farmer accepted.
+
+"That pretty, leetle gal's mighty bothered about her and her friends
+playin' hob in my berry patch last May," Mr. Bob Buckham said, as he
+and Neale crossed the Parade Ground. "How'd that school teacher l'arn
+of it? Too bad! I reckon the gals didn't mean no harm."
+
+"Why," cried Neale, flushing, and looking at the old man curiously.
+"Somebody told on them."
+
+"Told the teacher, you mean?"
+
+"Yes. Wrote a letter to Mr. Marks giving all their names."
+
+"Sho! ain't that a shame?" said Mr. Buckham, calm as a summer sea.
+
+"Pretty mean I think myself, sir," Neale said warmly. "It stirred Mr.
+Marks all up. He says he thinks you may intend making the girls pay for
+the berries they took."
+
+"_What's that?_" demanded the farmer, stopping stock still on the walk.
+
+"He says your letter sounds as though you would do just that."
+
+"_My_ letter?"
+
+"Mr. Marks says the letter came from you."
+
+"Why, Neale, you know I ain't no writest," gasped the farmer. "It ain't
+possible he thinks I'd write him about a peck or two of strawberries?
+They was some of my best and earliest ones, and I was mad enough about
+it at the time; but, shucks! old Bob Buckham ain't mean enough to harry
+a pack of gals about sech a thing, I should hope!"
+
+Neale stared at him with a look of satisfaction on his face.
+
+"Don't mean to tell me that Pretty thinks that of me, do ye?" added the
+old gentleman, much worried.
+
+"Yes, sir. She thinks you sent the letter."
+
+"Wal! she treats me mighty nice, then. I'd des-arve snubbin'--I most
+surely would--at her han's if she thinks I am that mean. She's a mighty
+nice gal."
+
+"She's the best little sport ever, Aggie is!" declared the boy,
+enthusiastically. Then he added: "I knew it wasn't like you to do such a
+thing, and it's puzzled me. But somebody wrote in your name and listed
+all the girls that raided your berry patch--_but one_."
+
+"All but one gal?"
+
+"Yes, sir. One girl's name was left off the list," Neale said
+confidently.
+
+"Oh, dear me! Dear, dear me!" murmured the old farmer, pursing his lips
+and eyeing Neale very gravely.
+
+"And that particular girl is going to have one of the best parts in the
+show they are giving for the hospital benefit," Neale pursued.
+
+"You don't say so?" said old Bob Buckham, still seriously.
+
+"And that very part is just what would be given our Aggie if she were
+not in disgrace--yes, sir!"
+
+"Not little Pretty?" demanded the farmer.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"My! my!"
+
+"This one girl whose name did not reach Mr. Marks was just as guilty as
+the others. That's right, Mr. Buckham. And she's got out of it----"
+
+"Hi!" exclaimed the farmer, sharply. "You're accusin' her of makin' all
+the trouble for her mates."
+
+"If you didn't, Mr. Buckham," said Neale, boldly.
+
+"I most sartainly didn't!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham. "You know I wouldn't,
+Neale O'Neil; don't you?"
+
+"I never did think you did so mean a thing," declared Neale, frankly.
+
+"But somebody told your teacher."
+
+"Wrote him."
+
+"And he thinks I done it?"
+
+"Whoever it was must have signed your name to the letter."
+
+"Nobody but marm does that," said the old man, quickly. "'Strawberry
+Farm'--that is what we call the place, you know, Neale."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"An' I got it printed on some letter paper, and marm always writes my
+letters for me on that paper. Then, if it's a _very_ pertic'lar one, I
+sign it myself. But you know, Neale, I ain't no schollard. I handle a
+muck-fork better'n I do a pen."
+
+"I know--yes, sir," agreed the boy.
+
+"Now," continued the farmer, vigorously, "you find out if this here
+letter that was writ, and your teacher received, was writ on one of our
+letterheads. Of course, marm never done it; but--p'raps---- Wal! you
+find out if it re'lly did come from Strawberry Farm, and if Bob
+Buckham's name is onto it. That's all."
+
+And Mr. Buckham refused to discuss the matter any further at that time.
+
+The busy fall days were flying. It was already the middle of October.
+Hallowe'en was in prospect and Carrie Poole, who lived in a modernized
+farmhouse out of town on the Buckshot Road, planned to give a big
+Hallowe'en party. Of course the two Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil
+were invited.
+
+Looking forward to the party divided interest among the older girls with
+the preparations for the performance of _The Carnation Countess_.
+
+A full fortnight before the thirty-first of October, came the first
+general rehearsal of the musical play. It could not be rehearsed with
+the scenery, of course, nor on the Opera House stage. The big hall of
+the high school building had a large stage and here the preliminary
+rehearsals were to be conducted.
+
+That was a Saturday afternoon eagerly looked forward to. Although the
+boys claimed to have much less interest in the play than the girls, even
+they were excited over the rehearsal. Few of the boys had speaking parts
+in _The Carnation Countess_, but all who had good voices were drafted by
+Professor Ware for the choruses.
+
+"And even those fellows whose voices are changing, and sound more like
+bullfrogs than anything human," chuckled Neale O'Neil, "have got to
+help swell the 'Roman populace' or carry out the dead."
+
+"Now, Neale O'Neil! you know very well," said Tess, reprovingly, "that
+the Romans aren't in this play at all, and there will be no dead to
+carry out."
+
+"Buzz! buzz! buzz-z-z-z!" crooned Dot, rocking her Alice-doll to sleep.
+
+"Somebody'll slap at that bumblebee and try to kill it, if it doesn't
+look out," promised Agnes, pouting. "I wish you folks wouldn't talk
+about the old play. You--make--me--feel--so--bad!"
+
+"You'll feel worse when you see that Trix Severn trying to play Innocent
+Delight," sniffed Eva Larry, who chanced to be present in the Corner
+House sitting-room where the discussion was going on.
+
+"I don't suppose she is really _bad_ in it, Eva," Ruth said.
+
+"Not bad? She's--worse!" proclaimed the boisterous one. "Just wait. I
+know Miss Lederer is heart-broken over her."
+
+"She'll spoil the play, won't she?" asked Tess, the anxious. "I hope I
+won't spoil it, with my Swiftwing part."
+
+"Oh, you're all right, honey," Agnes assured her. "You know your part
+already, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes. It's not nearly so hard to remember as the sovereigns of
+England. And that's how I come to get the part of Swiftwing, I guess."
+
+"What is the way?" asked Ruth, curiously.
+
+"She means the reason," Agnes put in, who had lately begun to criticise
+the family's use of English.
+
+"The reason I got the part?" queried Tess, gravely. "'Cause I could
+recite the sovereigns of England so well. I guess Miss Pepperill told
+Professor Ware, and so he gave me the part in the play."
+
+"Of course!" whispered Neale. "Of course, it couldn't be that they gave
+a certain person her part because, if it hadn't been for her, nobody
+would ever have thought of having a play for the benefit of the
+hospital."
+
+"I hope they gave it to her because they believed she was best fitted
+for the part," said Ruth, placidly.
+
+"Well, believe me!" exclaimed the slangy Eva, "Trix Severn is not fitted
+for her part. Wait till to-morrow afternoon!"
+
+"I have a good mind not to go to the rehearsal at all," sighed Agnes.
+
+But she did not mean that. If she could not be one of the performers
+herself, she was eager to see her fellow-pupils try their talents on the
+stage.
+
+There was no orchestra, of course; but the pianist gave the music cues,
+and the stage-manager lectured the various choruses and dancers, while
+Professor Ware put them through their musical parts. Most of the song
+numbers had become familiar to the young performers. Even Dot Kenway's
+class went through with their part quite successfully. And if they had
+all been "buzzing" as indefatigably as the smallest Corner House girl at
+home and abroad, it was not surprising that they were letter perfect.
+
+The dancing was another matter entirely. To teach a few pupils at a time
+certain steps, and then to try to combine those companies in a single
+regiment, each individual of which must keep perfect time, is a greater
+task than the inexperienced would imagine.
+
+The training of the girls and boys to whom had been assigned the roles
+of the more or less important characters in the play, was an unhappy
+task in some instances. While most children can be taught to sing, and
+many take naturally to dancing, to instruct them in the mysteries of
+elocution is a task to try the patience of the angels themselves.
+
+None of the professional principals in the cast were present at this
+rehearsal save the gracious lady who was to represent The Carnation
+Countess. She was both cheerful and obliging; but she did lose her
+temper in one instance and spoke sharply.
+
+A certain portion of the first act had been gone over and over again. It
+had been wrecked each time by one certain actor. They had left it and
+gone on with further scenes, and had then gone back to the hard part
+again. It was no use; the girl who did not express her part properly
+balked them all.
+
+"I declare, Professor," the professional said tartly, "you must have
+selected this Innocent Delight with your eyes shut. In the first place,
+_why_ a brunette when the part calls for a blonde, if any part ever
+called for one? It distresses me to say it, but if this Innocent Delight
+is a sample of what your Milton girls can do in a play, you would much
+better change your plans and put on _Puss in Boots_, instead of a piece
+like _The Carnation Countess_. The former would compass the calibre of
+your talent, I should say."
+
+"What did I tell you?" hissed Eva in Agnes' ear. "Trix Severn will spoil
+the whole show!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE HALLOWE'EN PARTY
+
+
+It had become an established custom now for Tess and Dot to call on Mrs.
+Eland each Monday afternoon.
+
+"She is such a nice lady. I wish you could meet my Mrs. Eland," Tess
+said to Mrs. Adams, who lived not far from the old Corner House, on
+Willow Street, and who was one of the first friends the Kenway sisters
+had made in Milton.
+
+Tess had been sent to Mrs. Adams on an errand for Mrs. MacCall, and now
+lingered at the invitation of the lady who loved to have any of the
+Corner House girls come in. "I wish you could meet my Mrs. Eland,"
+repeated Tess. "I believe it would do her good to have more callers.
+They'd liven her up--and she's so sad nowadays. I know _you'd_ liven her
+up, Mrs. Adams."
+
+"Well, child, I hope I wouldn't make her unhappy, I'm sure. I believe in
+folks being lively if they can. I haven't a particle of use for
+_grumps_--no, indeed! 'Laugh and grow fat' is a pretty good motto."
+
+"But you're not fat," suggested Tess; "and you are 'most always
+laughing."
+
+"That's a fact; but it's not worrying that keeps me lean. 'Care killed
+the cat' my mother used to say; but care never killed her, I'm certain!
+Some folks is born for leanness, and I'm one of 'em."
+
+"Well, it's real becoming to you," said Tess, kindly, eyeing the rather
+bony woman with reflective gaze. "And you're not as thin as Briggs, the
+baker. Mrs. MacCall says he doesn't cast a shadow."
+
+"My soul! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Adams. "And his loaves of bread have got
+so't they don't cast much of a shadow. I've been complaining to him
+about his bread. The rise in the price of flour can't excuse altogether
+the stinginess of his loaves.
+
+"He came here the other day about dark, and I had my porch door locked.
+I heard him knock and I asks, 'Who's there?'
+
+"'It's the baker, ma'am,' says he. 'Here's your bread.'
+
+"'Well, bring it in,' says I, forgetting the door was locked.
+
+"'I don't see how I can, ma'am,' he says, ''nless I put it through the
+keyhole, ma'am,' and he begun to giggle. But I put the come-up-ance on
+him," declared Mrs. Adams, with satisfaction. I says:
+
+"'I don't see what's to stop you, Myron Briggs. The goodness knows your
+loaves are small enough to go through the keyhole.' And he didn't have
+nothin' more to say to me."
+
+"Why, I think that's very funny," said Tess, in her sober way. "I'll
+tell that to Mrs. Eland. Maybe it will amuse her."
+
+But on the next occasion when the two younger Corner House girls went to
+the hospital, Tess did not try to cheer the matron's spirits by
+repeating Mrs. Adams's joke on the baker.
+
+Mrs. Eland had been crying. Even usually unobservant Dot noticed it. Her
+eyes were red and her face pale and drawn. The pretty pink of her cheeks
+and the ready twinkle in her gray eyes, were missing.
+
+On the table by the matron's side were some faded old letters--quite a
+bundle of them, in fact--tied with a faded tape. They were docketed
+carefully on their ends with ink that had yellowed with age.
+
+"These are letters from my uncle--'Lemon' Aden, as our little Dot called
+him," Mrs. Eland said, with a sad smile. "To my--my poor father. Those
+letters he put into my hand to take care of when we knew that awful fire
+that destroyed most of our city, was going to sweep away our home.
+
+"I took the letters and Teeny by the hand----"
+
+"Was Teeny your sister's name, Mrs. Eland?" asked Tess, deeply
+interested.
+
+"So we called her," the matron said. "She was such a little fairy! As
+small and delicate as Dot, here. Only she was light--a regular
+milk-and-rose complexion and with red-gold hair."
+
+"Like Tess' teacher's hair?" asked Dot, curiously. "She's got red hair."
+
+"Oh, goodness!" cried Tess, "she's not pretty. That's sure, if her hair
+is red!"
+
+"Teeny's hair was lovely," said Mrs. Eland, ruminatively. "I can
+remember just how she looked. I was but four years older than she; but I
+was a big girl."
+
+"You mean when that awful fire came?" asked Tess.
+
+"Yes, my dear. Father told me to take care of these letters; they were
+important. And to keep tight hold of Teeny's hand."
+
+"And didn't you?" asked Dot, to whose thoroughly Sunday-school-trained
+mind, all punishment directly followed disobedience.
+
+"Oh, yes. I did as he told me. He went back into the house to get
+mother. She was an invalid, you know."
+
+"Like Mrs. Buckham," suggested Tess.
+
+A spasm of pain crossed the hospital matron's face, and she turned away
+for a moment. After a little she continued her story.
+
+"And then the fire came so suddenly that it swallowed the house right
+up!"
+
+"Oh!" gasped Dot.
+
+"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Eland," whispered Tess, patting her arm.
+
+"It was very dreadful," said the gray lady, softly. "Teeny and I were
+grabbed up by some men in a wagon, and the horses galloped us away to
+safety. But our poor mother and father were buried in the ruins of the
+house."
+
+"And you saved the letters?" said Tess.
+
+"But lost Teeny," said Mrs. Eland, sadly. "There was such confusion in
+the camp of the refugees that many families were separated. By and by I
+came East--and I brought these letters. But--but they do me no good now.
+I can prove nothing by them. 'Corroborative evidence,' so the lawyers
+say, is lacking----
+
+"Well, well, well!" she said, breaking off suddenly. "All that does not
+interest you little ones."
+
+"So you couldn't give the letters to your Uncle Lem-u-el?" questioned
+Dot, careful to get the name right this time.
+
+"I never could even see my Uncle Lemuel," said Mrs. Eland, with a sigh.
+"I believe he knew I was searching for him during the last few years of
+his life; but he always kept out of my way."
+
+"Oh! wasn't that bad of him!" cried Tess.
+
+"I don't know. His end was most miserable. People said he must have at
+one time accumulated a great deal of money. He was supposed to be as
+rich a man as lived in Milton--richer than your Uncle Peter Stower. But
+he must have squandered it all in some way. He died finally in the
+Quoharis poorhouse. He did not belong in that town; but he wandered
+there in a storm and they took him in."
+
+"And didn't they find lots of money in his clothes when he was dead?"
+queried Dot, who had heard something about misers.
+
+"Mercy, no! He had no money, I am quite sure," said the lady,
+confidently. "The old townfarm keeper over there tells me that Mr.
+Lemuel Aden left nothing but some worthless papers and letters and a
+little memorandum book, or diary. I suppose they are hardly worth my
+claiming them. At least, I never have done so, and Uncle Lemuel died
+quite fifteen years ago."
+
+After that Mrs. Eland had no more to say about Lemuel Aden for the time
+being, but tried to amuse her little visitors, as usual. And Tess never
+told that joke about Briggs, the baker.
+
+This brings us, naturally, to the eve of All Saints, an occasion much
+given over to feasting and foolery. "When churchyards yawn--if they ever
+do yawn," suggested Neale, as he and the two oldest Corner House girls
+set forth on the crisp evening in question, to walk out to Carrie
+Poole's place.
+
+"I guess folks yarn about them, more than the graves yawn," said Agnes,
+roguishly. "Remember the garret ghost, Ruth?"
+
+"You mean what Dot thought was a goat?" laughed the older girl. "I
+believe you!" she went on, caught in the contagion of slang.
+
+"That was before my time in Milton," said Neale, cheerfully. "But I have
+heard how you Corner House girls laid the ghost that had haunted the old
+place so long."
+
+[Illustration: They saw two huge pumpkin lanterns grinning a welcome
+from the gateposts. Page 173]
+
+"I believe Uncle Peter must have known what it really was," said Ruth,
+thoughtfully. "But it delighted him, I suppose, to have people talk
+about the old house, and be afraid to visit him. He was a recluse."
+
+"And a miser, they say," Neale observed bluntly.
+
+"I don't think we should say that," Ruth replied quickly. "Everybody
+tried to get money from Uncle Peter. Everybody but our mother and
+father, I guess. That is why he left most everything to us."
+
+"Well," Agnes said, "they all declared he haunted the place himself
+after he died."
+
+"That's a wicked story!" Ruth sharply exclaimed. "I don't believe there
+is such a thing as a ghost, anyway!"
+
+"And you, going to a ghost party right now?" cried Neale, laughing.
+
+"These will be play ghosts," returned Ruth.
+
+"Oh, _will_ they? You just wait and see," chuckled the boy, for he and
+his close chum, Joe Eldred, were masters of ceremonies, and they had
+promised to startle Carrie and her guests with "real Hallowe'en ghosts."
+
+Before the Corner House girls and their escort reached the top of the
+hill on which the Poole house stood they saw the two huge pumpkin
+lanterns grinning a welcome from the gateposts. There was a string of
+smaller Hallowe'en lanterns across the porch before the entrance to the
+house. And every time anybody pushed open the gate, a ghostly
+apparition with a glowing head rose up most astonishingly behind the
+porch railing to startle the visitor.
+
+Neale and Joe had been at the house all the afternoon, putting up these
+and other bits of foolery. Joe's father, who was superintendent of the
+Milton Electric Light Company, allowed his son considerable freedom in
+the shops. Joe and Neale had brought out a good-sized battery outfit and
+the necessary wires and attachments; and when the girls stopped on the
+mat at the door to remove their overshoes, each got a distinct shock, to
+the great delight of the earlier guests who stood in the hall to observe
+the fun.
+
+"A ghost pushed you, Ruth Kenway!" cried Carrie, from the stairs.
+
+"Do you dare look down the well with a candle and see if you will see
+your future husband's face floating in the water, Aggie?" demanded Lucy
+Poole, Carrie's cousin.
+
+"Don't want to see my future husband," declared Agnes. "It will be bad
+enough to see him in reality when the awful time arrives."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE FIVE-DOLLAR GOLD PIECE
+
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"A deep, deep silence, please!"
+
+"Don't crowd so close--don't, Mary Breeze! If there are ghosts I can't
+protect you from them," came in Eva Larry's shrill whisper. "I'm sure
+I've not been vaccinated against seeing spirits."
+
+This was after all the visitors had arrived, had removed their wraps,
+had been ushered into the big double parlors and seated. Across the far
+end of the room was drawn a sheet, and the lights were very dim.
+
+A figure in long cloak and conical cap, leaning on a long wand, appeared
+suddenly beside the curtain. A blue light seemed to glimmer faintly
+around the Hallowe'en figure and outline it.
+
+"Oh!" gasped Lucy Poole, "there's the very Old Witch of them all, I do
+declare!"
+
+"The Old Wizard, you mean," laughed Agnes, who knew that Neale O'Neil
+was hidden behind the long cloak and the false face. He looked quite as
+feminine in this rig as any witch ever does look.
+
+"Silence!" commanded again the husky voice from behind the screen.
+
+With some little bustle the party fell still. The Hallowe'en Witch
+raised the wand and rapped the butt three times upon the little stand
+near by.
+
+"Oh! oh! real spirits," gasped Eva. "They always begin with
+table-rappings, don't they?"
+
+"Hush!" commanded the husky voice once more.
+
+"This is a perverse and unbelieving generation," croaked the witch. "Ye
+all doubt black magic and white astrology, and ghostly visitations. I am
+sent by Those Who Fly By Night--at the head of whom flies the Witch of
+Endor--who commune with goblins and fays--I am sent to convert you all
+to the truth.
+
+"Ha! Thunder! Lightning!"
+
+The ears of the company were almost deafened and their eyes blinded by a
+startling crash like thunder behind the screen and a vivid flash of
+zig-zag light across it.
+
+"See!" croaked the supposed hag. "Even Thunder and Lightning do my
+bidding. Now! Rain! Sleet! Advance!"
+
+The wondering spectators began to murmur. An almost perfect imitation of
+dashing sleet against the window panes and rain pouring from the
+water-spouts followed. Joe Eldred, behind the scenes, certainly managed
+the paraphernalia borrowed from the Milton Opera House with good effect.
+
+As the murmurs subsided the voice of the Hallowe'en Witch rose again:
+
+"To prove to you our secret knowledge of all that goes on--even the
+innermost thoughts of your hearts--I will answer any question put to
+me--marvelously--in the twinkling of an eye. Watch the screen!"
+
+Primed beforehand, one of the boys in the back of the room shouted a
+question. The witch whirled about and pointed to the screen. Letters of
+fire seemed to flash from the point of the wand and to cross the sheet,
+forming the words of a pertinent reply to the query that had been asked.
+
+The girls laughed and applauded. The boys stamped and cheered.
+
+Question followed question. Some were spontaneous and the answers showed
+a surprisingly exact knowledge of the questioners' private affairs, or
+else a happy gift at repartee. Of course, the illuminated writing was
+some trick of electricity; nevertheless it was both amusing and
+puzzling.
+
+References to school fun, jokes in class-room, happenings known to most
+of those present who attended the Milton schools, suggested the most
+popular queries.
+
+Suddenly Eva Larry's sharp voice rang through the room. Her question was
+distinctly personal, and it shocked some few of the listeners into
+silence.
+
+"Who told on the basket ball team and got us all barred from taking part
+in the play?"
+
+"Oh, Eva!" groaned Agnes, who sat beside her loyal, if unwise friend.
+
+The witch's wand poised, seemed to hesitate longer than usual, and then
+the noncommittal answer flashed out:
+
+The Traitor is Here!
+
+There was a general shuffling of feet and murmur of surprise. The lights
+went up. The Hallowe'en Witch had disappeared and that part of the
+entertainment was over.
+
+"I'd like to have seen Trix Severn's face when that last question was
+sprung," whispered Myra Stetson to Agnes.
+
+"Oh! it was awful!" murmured the Corner House girl. "Why did you do it,
+Eva?" she demanded of the harum-scarum girl on her other side.
+
+"Huh! do you s'pose I thought that all up by myself?" demanded Eva.
+
+"Why! didn't you?"
+
+"No, ma'am! Neale O'Neil gave it to me written on a piece of paper and
+told me when to shout it out. So now! I guess there's more than just us
+who have suspected that pussy-cat, Trix Severn."
+
+"Oh, don't, girls, don't!" begged Agnes. "We haven't any proof--nor has
+Neale, I'm sure. I'll just tell him what I think about it."
+
+But she had no opportunity of scolding her boy chum on this evening. He
+was so busy preparing the other tricks and frolics which followed that
+Agnes could scarcely say a word to him.
+
+In the big front hall was a booth of black cloth, decorated with
+crescents, stars, and astronomical signs in gilt.
+
+Some of the girls were paring apples in long "curls" and throwing the
+curls over their shoulders to see if the parings would form anything
+like an initial letter on the floor. It was something of a trick to get
+all the skin off the apple in one long, curling piece. But Agnes
+succeeded and threw the peeling behind her.
+
+"I don't see as that's much of any thing," Eva said, reflectively. "Oh,
+Aggie, it's a U!"
+
+"It's a _me_!" laughed the Corner House girl. "Then I'm going to be my
+own best friend. Hurrah!"
+
+"No, little dunce; I mean it's the letter U," said Eva, squeezing her.
+
+"I think it looks more like E, dear," returned Agnes. "So it must stand
+for Eva. You and I are going to be chums _forever_!"
+
+Afterward Agnes remembered that U was an N upside down!
+
+When the girls proposed going out to the spring-house and each looking
+down the well to see whose reflection would appear in the water in the
+light of a ghostly candle, Carrie's mother vetoed it.
+
+"I guess not!" she said vigorously. "I'm not going to have candle-grease
+dripped down my well. Yes! I did it when I was a foolish girl--I know I
+did, Carrie. Your father had no business telling you. What he didn't
+tell you was that your grandfather was a week cleaning out the well,
+and it was right at the beginning of a long, dry spell."
+
+"Who did you see in the well, Mother?" asked Carrie, roguishly.
+
+"Never mind whom I saw. It wasn't your father, although he had begun to
+shine around me, even then," laughed Mrs. Poole.
+
+Suddenly two of the girls screamed. A mysterious light had appeared in
+the black-cloth booth. The gilt signs upon it showed more plainly. There
+was a rustling noise, and then the flap of the booth was pushed back.
+The Hallowe'en Witch appeared in the opening.
+
+"Money!" cried the witch. "Bright, golden coin. It's that for which all
+witches are supposed to sell themselves. See!"
+
+Between thumb and finger the witch held up a shiny five-dollar gold
+piece. In the other hand was held a shallow pan of water.
+
+"To gain gold one must cross water," intoned the witch, solemnly. "This
+gold piece is freely the property of whoever can take it out of the pan
+of water," and with a tinkle the five-dollar coin was dropped into the
+pan.
+
+"The pan," said the witch, being careful not to turn so as to hide the
+pan, but, placing it on a taboret inside the tent, "remains in sight of
+all. One at a time ye may try to pick the coin out of the pan--one at a
+time. That all may have an equal chance, I will declare that as soon as
+one candidate gets the coin another gold piece will be deposited in the
+pan for the next person attempting the feat."
+
+"Why, how silly!" cried Trix Severn, from the background. "If you want
+to give us each a counterfeit five dollars, why not hand it to us?"
+
+"If such exchange is desired, our master, Mr. Poole, stands ready to
+exchange each coin secured by the neophytes for a perfectly good, new,
+five-dollar bill," proceeded the witch.
+
+"There's your chance, Trix!" laughed one of the boys.
+
+"Oh! he's only fooling," replied the hotel-keeper's daughter. She loved
+money.
+
+"Each and every one who wishes may try," went on the witch. "But there
+is a condition."
+
+"Oh!" muttered Trix. "Thought there was some string hitched to it."
+
+"And you're right, there, Trix," murmured Eva Larry.
+
+"Silence!" cried somebody.
+
+"A condition," went on the Hallowe'en Witch. "That condition will be
+whispered in the ear of each candidate who tries to seize the coin."
+
+"No, thank you! I won't try," cried Lucy Poole, laughing and shaking her
+curls. "When he goes to make believe whisper in your ear, he'll bite
+you! I wouldn't trust that old witch!"
+
+The others laughed hilariously at this; but Trix Severn was pushing
+forward. If there was a gold piece to be given away, she wanted first
+chance at it--string, or no string.
+
+"Keep your eyes on the pan!" cried the witch, waving empty hands in the
+air all about the pan and taboret, to show that there was "no
+flim-flam," as the boys called it. "Now! first neophyte step forward!"
+
+"I don't believe he knows what that means," giggled Myra Stetson. "I
+don't."
+
+But she could not step in before Trix. Miss Severn pushed to the front
+and was nearest to the master of ceremonies.
+
+"Give me a chance!" she cried. "You're going to lose your old gold
+piece."
+
+"It's a perfectly new one, Trixie," whispered somebody, shrilly. "It
+isn't old at all!"
+
+Without a word the witch beckoned the girl inside the booth. The flap of
+it dropped and they were hidden. The light was cast from a dim, green
+globe hung at the apex of the little tent. It made a ghostly glow over
+all inside.
+
+"Advance!" whispered the witch, with lips close to Trix Severn's pretty
+ear. "Advance, neophyte! The gold piece is yours for the taking. But
+only she who has no guilt and treachery upon her heart may seize the
+shining coin. _If you are faithful to your friends, take the coin!_"
+
+Trix started and her pretty face was cast in an angry look as she
+glanced aside at the masquerader. But she made no reply save by her
+out-thrust hand which dived into the water.
+
+Instantly the crowd outside heard a piercing scream from Trix Severn.
+She burst out of the tent, and, amid the laughter and jeers of her
+comrades, sought shelter in another room.
+
+"Did you get the gold piece, Trix?" cried some.
+
+"Divide with a fellow, will you?"
+
+"Say! there are more tricks than are dreamed of in your philosophy, eh,
+Trix?" gibed Eva Larry.
+
+And for that atrocious pun she was pushed forward to the tent, to be the
+next victim on the altar of the boys' perfectly harmless, though
+surprising joke.
+
+Nobody was able to pick the gold piece out of the pan of water, thanks
+to the electric battery that Joe Eldred had so skillfully connected with
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER
+
+
+"You scared her," declared Agnes to Neale, on the way home from the
+party.
+
+"Scared who?" demanded the boy, with apparent innocence.
+
+"Trix."
+
+"What if I did? I scared a lot of them."
+
+"But you scared her worse than all the rest," Agnes said. "She was
+crying in the bedroom upstairs. Lucy told me."
+
+"Crying because she couldn't get that five-dollar gold piece," chuckled
+Neale. "I wish I could believe they were tears of repentance."
+
+"Who made you a judge, Neale O'Neil?" asked Ruth, with asperity.
+
+"I'm not. Never was in politics," grinned the boy.
+
+"Smartie!" said Agnes.
+
+"Trix was judged by her own conscience," Neale added soberly. "I never
+said a word to her about that letter."
+
+"What letter do you mean?" demanded Ruth.
+
+But Neale shut his lips on that. When Ruth was not by, however, he
+admitted to Agnes that he had borrowed from Mr. Marks the letter that
+gentleman had received in reference to the strawberry raid. Neale was
+going to show it to Mr. Bob Buckham.
+
+"I told Mr. Marks there was some funny business about it. I knew Mr.
+Buckham never intended to report you girls to the principal. He didn't
+even know your names. Mr. Marks told me to find out about it and report
+to him. He knows that I once worked for Bob Buckham and that he's a
+friend of mine."
+
+"Oh, Neale!" groaned Agnes. "That won't help me."
+
+"Help you to what?"
+
+"To get a chance to act in the play," sighed the girl. "I did take the
+berries! So did the other girls. We deserve our punishment. Mr. Marks
+won't change his mind."
+
+But Neale was not altogether sure of that. There were things happening
+just then which pointed to several changes in the character parts of
+_The Carnation Countess_. It was being discovered by the director and
+stage manager that many of the characters should be recast. Some of the
+girls and boys to whom the parts had been allotted could not possibly
+compass them.
+
+This was particularly plain in the case of Innocent Delight and some
+others of the female roles. Some of the very brightest girls in the high
+school were debarred from taking part in the play because of Mr. Marks'
+ruling against the first basket ball team and some of their friends.
+
+Neale O'Neil determined to see Mr. Bob Buckham as soon as possible.
+Another rehearsal would occur on this Saturday afternoon; so Friday
+evening it was arranged that the interests of the Corner House girls
+should be divided for one Saturday, at least.
+
+Tess and Dot were going to the hospital in the forenoon. Uncle Rufus had
+coaxed many fall flowers into late blooming this year and the little
+girls were to carry great bunches of asters and garden-grown
+chrysanthemums to decorate the children's ward for Thanksgiving, which
+came the very next Thursday.
+
+Ruth had shopping to do and must confer with Mr. Howbridge about a
+Thanksgiving treat for the Meadow Street tenants. "A turkey for each
+family--and perhaps vegetables," she declared. "So many of them are
+foreigners. They have learned to celebrate our Fourth of July--why not
+our Thanksgiving?"
+
+Therefore, it was easy for Neale and Agnes to obtain permission to drive
+out to Strawberry Farm. Neale got a horse and runabout from the
+stableman for whom he occasionally drove, and Agnes was proud, indeed,
+when she came out in her furs and pretty new hat, with the fur-topped
+boots she had just purchased, and stepped into the carriage beside her
+friend.
+
+Tom Jonah looked longingly after them from the yard, but Agnes shook her
+head. "Not to-day, old fellow," she told the good old dog. "We're going
+to travel too fast for you," for the quick-stepping horse was anxious to
+be on the road.
+
+They departed amid the cheers of the whole family--and Sammy Pinkney,
+who threw a big cabbage-stalk after them for good luck and yelled his
+derisive compliments.
+
+"Fresh kid!" muttered Neale.
+
+"I'd like to spank that boy," sighed Agnes. "There never was so bad a
+boy since the world began, I believe!"
+
+"I expect that's what the neighbors said about little Cain and Abel,"
+chuckled Neale, recovering his good-nature at once.
+
+"Well," said Agnes, "Sammy's worse than little Tommy Rooney, who ran
+away from Bloomingsburg to kill Indians."
+
+"Did he kill any?" asked Neale.
+
+"Not here in Milton," Agnes said, laughing. "But he came near getting
+drowned in the canal."
+
+They drove on by the road that led past Lycurgus Billet's. The
+tumbled-down house looked just as forlorn as ever, its broken windows
+stuffed with old hats and gunny-sacks and the like, its broken steps a
+menace to the limbs of those who went in and out.
+
+Mrs. Lycurgus was picking up chips around the chopping-block and was not
+averse to stopping for a chat. "No, Lycurgus ain't here," she drawled.
+"He's gone huntin'. This yere's the first day the law's off'n deer an'
+Lycurgus 'lows ter git his share of deer-meat. He knows where there's a
+lick," and she chuckled in anticipation of a full larder.
+
+"Sue? Naw, she ain't here nuther. Mrs. Buckham--her that's the
+invalid--has sorter took a fancy ter Sue. She's been a-stoppin' there at
+that Strawberry Farm, right smart now.
+
+"You goin' there? Then you'll likely see her. She likes it right well;
+but she's a wild young 'un. I dunno's she'll stand it for long."
+
+"Don't you miss her?" asked Agnes, as Neale prepared to drive on.
+
+"Miss Sue? My soul!" ejaculated Mrs. Billet, showing a ragged row of
+teeth in a broad smile. "Dunno how I _could_ miss one young 'un! There's
+a-plenty others."
+
+At the Buckham farm little Sue Billet was much in evidence. She was
+tagging right after the old farmer all the time, and it was plain whose
+companionship it was that made the half-wild child contented away from
+home.
+
+The farmer was hearty in his greeting, and he insisted that the visitors
+go right in "to see marm."
+
+"Wipe yer feet on the door-mat," advised the old man. "Me and Sue
+haster, or else Posy'll put us out. I never did see a gal with sech a
+mania for cleanin' floors as that Posy gal."
+
+The invalid in her bower of bright-colored wools welcomed Agnes warmly.
+"Here's my pretty one! I declare you are a cure for sore eyes," she
+cried. "And how are the sisters? Why didn't they come to-day?"
+
+Neale remained outside to speak with Mr. Buckham for some minutes. The
+old farmer, with his silver-bowed spectacles on his nose looked hard at
+the letter Neale had brought.
+
+"Not that I kin read it," he said ruefully, "or could if it was writ in
+letters of gold. But I kin see it ain't marm's hand of write--no, sir."
+
+"I was very sure of that," Neale said quickly. "Let me read it to you,
+sir. You see it's written on your own stationery."
+
+"I see that," admitted the farmer. "Oh, yes; I see that."
+
+Neale began:
+
+    "'_Mr. Curtis G. Marks_,
+        "'_Principal Milton High School._
+
+    "'DEAR SIR:  Mr. Robert Buckham wishes to bring to your attention
+    the fact that on May twenty-third last, a party of your girls,
+    including the members of the first basket ball team, on their
+    way home from Fleeting, were delayed by an accident to the car,
+    right beside his strawberry field; and that the girls named
+    below entered the field without permission, and picked and ate a
+    quantity of berries, beside destroying some vines. Mr. Buckham
+    wishes to call your serious attention to the matter and may yet
+    take steps to punish the culprits himself.'"
+
+Then followed the names of all the girls whom Mr. Marks considered it
+his duty to punish. There was no signature at all to the letter; but it
+purported to come from the old farmer, and to be written at his
+instance.
+
+"I dunno as ye kin call it forgery," muttered Mr. Buckham; "but it's
+blamed mean--that's what it is! It gives me a black eye with these gals,
+and the gals a black eye with the teacher. Sho! it's a real mean thing
+to do."
+
+"But who did it?" demanded Neale, earnestly.
+
+"Ya-as! That's the question," returned Mr. Bob Buckham. "If we knowed
+that----"
+
+"Are you sure we don't know it?"
+
+The old man eyed him contemplatively. "You suspect somebody," he said.
+
+"Well! and so do you," declared the boy, warmly. "Only you've got some
+evidence, and we haven't."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"You must know who would have a chance to get your letter paper and
+write such a letter as that?"
+
+"Humph!" repeated the old man, reflectively.
+
+"I don't know how that girl came to be out here. But you know you saw
+her--and like enough she spoke of the strawberry raid--and she went in
+to see Mrs. Buckham--and she saw the writing paper----"
+
+All the time that Neale was drawling out these phrases he was watching
+the old farmer's grim face keenly for some flicker of emotion. But it
+was just as expressionless as a face of stone.
+
+"It's fine weather, we're having, Neale," said Mr. Buckham, finally.
+
+At that the boy lost his temper. "I tell you it's a mean shame!" he
+cried. "Poor Aggie can't act in that old play, and she wants to. And
+Trix Severn is spoiling the whole show, and she oughtn't to be allowed
+to. And if she was the cause of making all these other girls get
+punished, she ought to be shown up."
+
+"Let's see that letter agin, son," said the old man, quietly. He peered
+at the handwriting intently for a minute. Then he said, with perfectly
+sober lips but a twinkle in his eye:
+
+"Ye sure marm didn't write it?"
+
+"Just as sure as I can be! I know her handwriting," cried Neale. "You're
+fooling."
+
+"So all handwriting don't look alike, heh?" was the farmer's final
+comment, and he returned the letter to the boy's care.
+
+Neale looked startled for a moment. Then he folded the letter carefully
+and put it away in his pocket. On the way home he said to Agnes:
+
+"Say, Aggie!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Can you get me a sample of Trix Severn's handwriting?"
+
+"_What?_" gasped Agnes.
+
+"Just something she's written--a note, or an exercise, or something."
+
+Agnes stared at him in growing horror. "Neale O'Neil!" she cried.
+
+"Well?" he demanded gruffly.
+
+"You're going to try to put that letter upon her--you are going to try
+to prove that she made all this trouble."
+
+"Well! what if?" he asked, still without looking at her.
+
+"Never! Never in this world will I let you do it," said Agnes, firmly.
+
+"Huh! And I was only trying to see if there wasn't some way out of the
+mess for you," said Neale, as though offended.
+
+"I wouldn't want to get out of it--even if you could help me--at such a
+price. Because _she_ may have been a tale-bearer, do you think _I'd_ be
+one?"
+
+"Not even to get a chance to act in _The Carnation Countess_?" asked
+Neale, with a sudden smile.
+
+"No! And--and _that_ wouldn't help me, anyway!" she added, quite
+despairingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+MISS PEPPERILL AND THE GRAY LADY
+
+
+Tess and Dot Kenway set off for the hospital in good season that
+Saturday morning, their arms laden with great bunches of flowers, all
+wrapped about with layers of tissue paper, for the November air was
+keen.
+
+On the corner of High Street, the wind being somewhat blusterous, Dot
+managed to run into somebody; but she clung to the flowers nevertheless.
+
+"Hoity-toity!" ejaculated a rather sharp voice. "Where are you going,
+young lady?"
+
+"To--to the horsepistol," declared the muffled voice of the
+matter-of-fact Dot.
+
+"Hospital! hospital!" gasped Tess, in horror. "This is Miss Pepperill."
+
+"Ah! So it is Theresa and her little sister," said the teacher. "Humph!
+A child who mispronounces the word so badly as that will never get to
+the institution itself without help. Let me carry those flowers,
+Dorothy. I am going past the Women's and Children's Hospital myself."
+
+"Thank her, Dot!" hissed Tess. "It's very kind of her."
+
+"You can carry the flowers, Miss Pepperill," said the smallest Corner
+House girl, "if you want to. But I want Mrs. Eland to know I brought
+some as well as Tess."
+
+The red-haired lady laughed--rather a short, brusk laugh, that might
+have been a cough.
+
+"So you are going to see your Mrs. Eland, are you, Theresa?" she asked
+her pupil.
+
+"Yes, Miss Pepperill. We always see Mrs. Eland when we go to the
+hospital," said Tess. "But we like to see the children, too."
+
+"Yes," said Dot; "there is a boy there with only one arm. Do you suppose
+they'll grow a new one on him?"
+
+That time Miss Pepperill _did_ laugh in good earnest; but Tess
+despaired. "Goodness, Dot! they don't grow arms on folks."
+
+"Why not?" demanded the inquisitive Dorothy. "Our teacher was reading to
+us how new claws grow on lobsters when they lose 'em fighting. But
+perhaps that boy wasn't fighting when he lost his arm."
+
+"For pity's sake! I should hope not," observed Miss Pepperill. In a
+minute they came in sight of the hospital, and she added, in her very
+tartest tone of voice: "I shall go in with you, Theresa. I should like
+to meet your Mrs. Eland."
+
+"Yes, ma'am," Tess replied dutifully, but Dot whispered:
+
+"I don't like the way she says 'Theresa' to you, Tess. It--it sounds
+just as though you were going to have a tooth pulled."
+
+Miss Pepperill had stalked ahead with Dot's bunch of flowers. Dot did
+not much mind having the flowers carried for her; but she did not
+propose letting anybody at the hospital make a mistake as to who donated
+that particular bouquet. As they went in she said to the porter, who was
+quite well acquainted with the two smallest Corner House girls by this
+time:
+
+"Good morning, Mr. John. _We_ are bringing some flowers for the
+children's ward, Tess and me. That lady with--with the light hair, is
+carrying mine."
+
+Fortunately the red-haired school teacher did not hear this observation
+on the part of Dot.
+
+Half-way down the corridor, Mrs. Eland chanced to come out of one of the
+offices to meet the school teacher, face to face. "Oh! I beg your
+pardon," said the little, gray lady--for she dressed in that hue in the
+house as well as on the street. "Did you wish to see me?"
+
+The matron was small and plump; the teacher was tall and lean. The rosy,
+pleasant face of Mrs. Eland could not have been put to a greater
+contrast than with the angular and grim countenance of the bespectacled
+Miss Pepperill.
+
+The latter seemed, for the moment, confused. She was not a person easily
+disturbed in any situation, it would seem; but she was almost bashful as
+the little matron confronted her.
+
+"I--I---- Really, are you Mrs. Eland?" stammered the school teacher.
+
+"Yes," said the quietly smiling gray lady.
+
+"I--I have heard Theresa, here, speak so much of you----" She actually
+fell back upon Tess for support! "Theresa! introduce me to Mrs. Eland,"
+she commanded.
+
+"Oh, yes, Mrs. Eland," said the cordial Tess. "I wanted you to meet Miss
+Pepperill. You know--she's my teacher."
+
+"Oh! who wanted you to learn the succession of the rulers of England?"
+said Mrs. Eland, laughing, with a sweet, mellow tone.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. The sovereigns of England," Tess said.
+
+"Of course!" Mrs. Eland added:
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+      Then William, his son.'"
+
+"That old rhyme!" Miss Pepperill said, hastily, recovering herself
+somewhat. "You taught it to Theresa?"
+
+"I wrote it out for her," confessed Mrs. Eland. "I could never forget
+it. I learned it when I was a very little girl."
+
+"Indeed?" said Miss Pepperill, almost gasping the ejaculation. "So did
+I."
+
+"That was some time ago," Mrs. Eland said, in her gentle way. "My mother
+taught me."
+
+"Oh! did she?" exclaimed the other lady.
+
+"Yes. She was an English woman. She had been a governess herself in
+England."
+
+"Indeed!" Again the red-haired teacher almost barked the expression.
+She seemed to labor under some strong emotion. Tess noted the strange
+change in Miss Pepperill's usual manner as she spoke to the matron.
+
+"I think it must have been my mother who taught me," the teacher said,
+in the same jerky way. "I'm not sure. Or--perhaps--I picked it up from
+hearing it taught to somebody else.
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+      Then William, his son,----'
+
+Not easily forgotten when once learned."
+
+"Very true," Mrs. Eland said quietly. "I believe my little sister
+learned it listening to mother and me saying it over and over."
+
+"Ah! yes," Miss Pepperill observed. "Your sister? I suppose much younger
+than you?"
+
+"Oh, no; only about four years younger," said Mrs. Eland, sadly. "But I
+lost her when we were both very young."
+
+"Oh! ah!" was Miss Pepperill's abrupt comment. "Death is sad--very sad,"
+and she shook her head.
+
+At the moment somebody spoke to the matron and called her away.
+Otherwise she might have stopped to explain that her sister had been
+actually lost, and that she had no knowledge as to whether she were dead
+or alive.
+
+The red-haired teacher and the two little Corner House girls went on to
+the children's ward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A THANKSGIVING SKATING PARTY
+
+
+The rehearsal of _The Carnation Countess_ that afternoon went most
+dreadfully.
+
+"It really is a shame!" chuckled Neale to Agnes, as he sat beside her
+for a few minutes after the boys acquitted themselves very well in their
+part. "It really is a shame," he went on, "what some of you girls can do
+to a part when it comes to acting. Talk about Hamlet's father being
+murdered to make a Roman holiday!"
+
+"Hush, you ridiculous boy! That isn't the quotation at all," admonished
+Agnes.
+
+"No? Well, Hamlet's father was murdered, wasn't he?"
+
+"I prefer to believe him a mythical character," said Agnes, primly.
+
+"At any rate, something as bad will happen to you, Neale O'Neil, if you
+revile the girls of Milton High," declared Eva Larry, who was near
+enough to hear the boy's comment. "Oh, dear me! I believe I could make
+something of that part of Cheerful Grigg, myself. Rose Carey is a
+regular stick!"
+
+"Hear! hear!" breathed Neale, soulfully. "I'm sorry for Professor
+Ware."
+
+"Well! he gave them the parts," snapped Eva. "I'm not sorry for him!"
+
+The musical director was a patient man; but he saw the play threatened
+with ruin by the stupidity of a few. If his voice grew sharp and his
+manner impatient before the rehearsal was over, there was little wonder.
+
+The choruses, and even the little folks' parts, went splendidly--with
+snap and vigor. Some of the bigger girls walked through their roles as
+though they were in a trance.
+
+"I declare I should expect more animation and a generally better
+performance from marionettes," cried the despairing professor.
+
+Mr. Marks came in, saw how things were going, and whispered a few words
+to Professor Ware. The latter fairly threw up his hands.
+
+"I give it up for to-day," he cried. "You all act like a set of puppets.
+Pray, pray, young ladies! try to get into the spirit of your parts by
+next Friday. Otherwise, I shall be tempted to recommend that the whole
+play be given up. We do not want to go before the Milton public and make
+ourselves ridiculous."
+
+Neale said to Agnes as he walked home with her: "Why don't you learn the
+part of Innocent Delight? I bet you couldn't do it so much better than
+Trix, after all."
+
+She looked at him with scorn. "Learn it?" she repeated. "I know it by
+heart--and all the other girl's parts, too. I've acted them all out in
+my room before the mirror." She laughed a little ruefully. "Lots of good
+it does me, too! And Ruth says I will have to sleep in another room, all
+by myself, if I don't stop it.
+
+"If I couldn't do the part of Innocent Delight better than Trix
+Severn----"
+
+She left the remainder of the observation to his imagination.
+
+The Thanksgiving recess was to last only from Wednesday afternoon till
+the following Monday morning. Friday and Saturday would be taken up with
+rehearsals--mostly because of the atrociously bad acting of some of the
+girls.
+
+The holiday itself, however, was free. Dinner was to be a joyous affair
+at the old Corner House. There were but two guests expected: Mr.
+Howbridge and Neale. Mr. Howbridge, their uncle's executor, and the
+Kenway sisters' guardian, was a bachelor, and he felt a deep interest in
+the Corner House girls. Of course, Agnes begged to have Neale come.
+
+In the Stower tenements in Meadow Street there was great rejoicing, too.
+Mr. Howbridge's own automobile had taken around the Thanksgiving baskets
+and the lawyer's clerk delivered them and made a brief speech at each
+presentation. The Corner House girls could not attend, for they were too
+busy in school and (at least, three of them) with their parts in the
+play. But Sadie Goronofsky reported the affair to Tess in these
+expressive words:
+
+"Say! you'd oughter seen my papa's wife and the kids. You'd think they'd
+never seen anything to eat before--an' we always has a goose Passover
+week. My! it was fierce! But there was so much in that basket that it
+made 'em all fair nutty. You'd oughter seen 'em!"
+
+Mrs. Kranz, the "delicatessen lady," as Dot called her, and Joe Maroni,
+helped fill the baskets. They were the two "rich tenants" on the Stower
+estate, and the example of the Corner House girls in generosity had its
+good effect upon the lonely German woman and the voluble Italian
+fruiterer.
+
+There were other needy people whom the Corner House girls remembered at
+this season with substantial gifts. Petunia Blossom, and her shiftless
+husband and growing family, looked to "gran'pap's missus" for their
+Thanksgiving fowl. And this year Seneca Sprague came in for a share of
+the Corner House bounty.
+
+Since the fatal day when Billy Bumps had secured a share of the
+prophet's generous thatch, Ruth had felt she owed Seneca something. The
+boys plagued him as he walked the streets in his flapping linen duster
+and broken straw hat; and older people were unkind enough to make fun of
+him.
+
+Seneca followed the scriptural command to the Jews regarding swine--and
+more, for he ate no meat of any kind. But the plump and luscious pig was
+indeed an abomination to Seneca.
+
+One day when Ruth went to market she saw a crowd of the market
+loiterers teasing Seneca Sprague, the man having ventured among them to
+peddle his tracts.
+
+The girl saw a smeary-aproned young butcher slip up behind the old man
+and drop a pig's tail into one of the pockets of his flapping duster.
+
+To the bystanders it was a harmless joke; to Seneca, Ruth knew, it would
+mean infamy and contamination. He would be months purging his conscience
+of the stain of "touching the unclean thing," as he expressed it.
+
+The girl went up to Seneca and spoke to him. She had a heavy basket of
+provisions and she asked the prophet to carry it home for her, which he
+did with good grace.
+
+When they arrived at the old Corner House Ruth told him if he would
+remove the linen coat she would sew up a tear in the back for him; and
+in this way she smuggled the "porker's appendage," as Neale O'Neil
+called it, out of the prophet's pocket.
+
+"And you ought to see the inside of that shack of his down on Bimberg's
+wharf," Neale O'Neil said. "I got a peep at it one day. You know it's an
+old office Bimberg used to use before he moved up town, and it's
+attached to his store-shed, and at the far end.
+
+"Seneca's got a little stove, and a cupboard, a cot to sleep on, a chair
+to sit in, and the walls are lined with bookshelves filled with old
+musty books."
+
+"Books!" exclaimed Agnes. "Does he read?"
+
+"Why, in his way, he's quite erudite," declared Neale, smiling. "He
+reads Josephus and the Apocrypha, and believes them quite as much
+inspired as the rabbinical books of the Old Testament, I believe. Most
+of his other books relate to the prophetical writings of the old
+patriarchs.
+
+"He believes that the Pilgrims were descended from the lost tribes of
+Israel and that God allowed them to people this country and raise up a
+nation which should be a refuge and example to all the peoples of the
+earth."
+
+"Why! I think that is really a wonderful thought," Ruth said.
+
+"He's strong on patriotism; and his belief in regard to the divine
+direction of George Washington does nobody any harm. If everybody
+believed as Seneca does, we would all have a greater love of country,
+that's sure."
+
+Ruth sent down to the little hut on the river dock a basket of such good
+things as she knew Seneca Sprague would appreciate.
+
+"I'd love to send him warm underwear," she sighed.
+
+"And a cap and mittens," Agnes put in. "He gives me the shivers when I
+see him pass along this cold weather, with his duster flapping."
+
+"Thank goodness he has put on socks and wears carpet slippers," said
+Ruth. "He believes it is unhealthy to wear many clothes. And he is
+healthy enough--goodness knows!"
+
+"But clothes are _awfully_ comfortable," said the luxury-loving Dot.
+
+"Right you are, Dottums," agreed Agnes. "And I'd rather be comfortable
+than so terribly healthy."
+
+The weather had become intensely cold during the past fortnight. Steady
+frost had chained the river and ponds. There had been no snow, but there
+was fine skating by Thanksgiving.
+
+On the morning of the holiday the two older Corner House girls and Neale
+O'Neil set off to meet a party of their school friends for a skating
+frolic on the canal and river. They met at the Park Lock, and skated
+down the solidly frozen canal to where it debouched into the river.
+
+Milton young folks were out in full force on this Thanksgiving morning,
+despite the keen wind blowing from the northwest. Jack Frost nipped
+fingers and toes; but there were huge bonfires burning here and there
+along the bank, and at these the skaters could go ashore to warm
+themselves when they felt too cold.
+
+River traffic, of course, was over for the season. The docks were for
+the most part deserted. Some reckless small boys built a fire of
+shavings and old barrels right on Bimberg's dock.
+
+When the first tar-barrel began to crackle, the sparks flew. Older
+skaters saw the danger; but when they rushed to put the fire out, it was
+beyond control. The Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil were among the
+first to see the danger. Seneca Sprague's shack was then afire.
+
+"Never mind. The old man's up town," cried one boy. "If it burns up it
+won't be much loss."
+
+"And it _will_ burn before the fire department gets here," said one of
+the girls.
+
+"Poor Seneca! I expect his poor possessions are treasures to him," said
+Ruth.
+
+"Cracky!" ejaculated Neale, suddenly, as the flames mounted higher.
+"What about the poor old duffer's books?"
+
+"Oh, Neale!" gasped Ruth. "And they mean so much to him."
+
+"Pshaw!" observed one of the other boys. "They're not really worth
+anything, are they?"
+
+"Whether they are or not, they are valuable to Seneca," Ruth repeated.
+
+"Well, goodness!" was the ejaculation of a third boy. "I wouldn't risk
+going into that shack if they were worth a million. See! the whole end
+of it is ablaze!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+NEALE'S ENDLESS CHAIN
+
+
+Skaters from both up and down the river augmented the crowd of
+spectators gathered along the shore to watch the fire. The fire-bells
+were clanging uptown, but as yet the first machine had not appeared. The
+firemen would have to attack the blaze from the street end of the dock,
+anyway.
+
+"Father's got goods stored in the shed," said Clarence Bimberg, "and
+they'll try to save them. I guess Seneca's old shack will have to go."
+
+"And all those books you told us about, Neale," Agnes cried.
+
+"Wish I could get 'em out for him!" declared the generous boy.
+
+"Pshaw! I can tell you how to do it. But you wouldn't dare," chuckled
+Clarence.
+
+"How?" demanded Neale.
+
+"You wouldn't dare!"
+
+"Well--mebbe not. But tell me anyhow."
+
+"There's an old trap-door in the dock under that office-shack."
+
+"You don't mean it, Clarry?"
+
+"Yes, there is. I know it's there. But it mightn't be open now--I mean
+maybe it's nailed down. I don't believe Seneca knows it's there. The
+boards just match."
+
+"Let's try it!" exclaimed Neale.
+
+"Oh, Neale, you wouldn't!" gasped Agnes, who had heard the conversation.
+
+"Of course he wouldn't," scoffed Clarence. "He's only bluffing. Father
+used to let us play around the old shack before Seneca got it to live
+in. And I found the trap. But I never said anything about it."
+
+Neale looked serious, but he said: "Just show me how to reach it,
+Clarry."
+
+"Why," said Clarence, "the ice is solid underneath the wharf. You can
+see it is. Skate right under, if you want," and he laughed again,
+believing Neale in fun.
+
+"Show me," said the white-haired boy.
+
+"Not much I won't! Why, the wharf boards are afire already, and the
+sparks will soon be raining down there."
+
+"Show me," demanded Neale. "If there _is_ a trap there----"
+
+"Oh, Neale!" Agnes cried again. "Don't!"
+
+"Don't you be a little goose, Aggie," said the earnest boy. "Come on,
+Clarry."
+
+"Oh, I don't want to," said the other boy, seeing that Neale was in
+earnest now. "We'll get burned."
+
+Neale grabbed his hand and whirled him around, and they shot in toward
+the burning wharf, whether Clarence would or no!
+
+"Hey, boys, keep away from there!" shouted a man from the next dock.
+"You'll get burned."
+
+"Oh, Neale, come back!" wailed Agnes.
+
+"You hear, Neale O'Neil?" gasped Clarence, struggling in the bigger
+boy's grasp. "_I don't want to go!_"
+
+"Show me where the trap is," said the boy who had been brought up in a
+circus. "Then you can run if you like. I'm not afraid."
+
+"I am!" squealed Clarence Bimberg.
+
+But he was forced by the stronger Neale to skate under the burning
+wharf. They bumped about for half a minute among the piles and the
+broken ice. They could hear the flames crackling overhead, and the smoke
+puffed in between the planks. The black ice was solid and there was
+light enough to see fairly well.
+
+"There! There!" shrieked the frightened Clarence. "You can see it now,
+Neale! Let me go!"
+
+It did not look like a trap-door to Neale. Yet some short, rotting steps
+led up out of the frozen water to the flooring of the old wharf. The
+moment he essayed to climb these steps on his skates, Clarence broke
+away and shot out from under the burning dock.
+
+Neale was too determined to reach the interior of Seneca Sprague's shack
+to save the old prophet's books, to bother about the defection of his
+schoolmate. If Joe Eldred had only been at hand, _he_ would have stood
+by!
+
+"Oh, Neale! can you open it?" quavered a voice behind and below him.
+
+Neale almost tumbled backward from the steps, he was so amazed. He
+looked down to see Agnes' rosy, troubled face turned up to his gaze.
+
+"For pity's sake! get out of here, Aggie," he begged.
+
+"I won't!" she returned, tartly.
+
+"You'll get burned."
+
+"So will you."
+
+"But aren't you afraid?" the boy demanded, in growing wonder.
+
+"Of course I am!" she gasped. "But I can stand it if _you_ can."
+
+"Oh, _me_!"
+
+"Hurry up!" cried Agnes. "I can help carry out some of the books."
+
+Meanwhile Neale had been pounding on the boards overhead. Suddenly two
+of them lifted a little.
+
+"I've got it!" yelled Neale, in delight, and above the crackling of the
+flames and the confusion of other sounds without.
+
+He burst up the rickety, old trap with his shoulders, and was met
+immediately by a stifling cloud of smoke. The interior of Seneca
+Sprague's shack was filled with the pungent vapor, although the flames
+were still on the outside.
+
+"Don't get burned, Neale!" cried Agnes, coughing below from a rift of
+smoke, as the boy climbed into the little room.
+
+"You better go away," returned Neale, in a muffled voice.
+
+"I'll take an armful of books when I do go--if you'll hand 'em down to
+me," cried his girl chum.
+
+"Oh, Aggie! if you get hurt Ruth will never forgive me," cried Neale,
+really troubled about the Corner House girl's presence in this place of
+danger.
+
+"I tell you to give me some of those books, Neale O'Neil!" cried Agnes.
+"If you don't I'll come up in there and get them."
+
+"Oh, don't be in such a hurry!" returned Neale.
+
+He came to the smoky opening with his arms full and began to descend the
+steps, which creaked under his weight. He slipped on the skates which he
+had had no time to remove, and came down with a crash, sitting upon the
+lowest step. But he did not loose his hold on the books.
+
+"Oh, Neale! are you hurt?" Agnes demanded.
+
+"Only in my dignity," growled the boy, grimly.
+
+Agnes began to giggle at that; but she grabbed the books from him. "Go
+back and get some more--that's a good boy!" she cried, and, whirling
+about, shot out from under the wharf.
+
+The worried Ruth, who had not seen the first of this adventure, was
+standing near. Agnes deposited the volumes at her sister's feet.
+
+"Look out for them, Ruthie!" Agnes cried. "Neale's going to get them
+all."
+
+With this reckless promise she sped back under the burning wharf. Water
+was pouring upon the goods' shed now, freezing almost as fast as it
+left the hose-pipes, but the firemen had not reached the little shack.
+
+Joe Eldred and some of the other boys reached the scene of Ruth's
+trouble and quickly understood the situation. If Neale O'Neil wanted to
+save Seneca Sprague's books, of course they would help him--not, as Joe
+said, that they "gave a picayune for the crazy old duffer."
+
+"Form a chain, boys! form a chain!" commanded Neale's muffled voice from
+inside the burning shack, when he learned who was below. And this the
+crowd did, passing the armfuls of books back and out from under the
+wharf as fast as Neale could gather them and hand them down.
+
+Agnes found herself put aside when Joe and his comrades got to work. But
+they praised her pluck, nevertheless.
+
+"Those Corner House girls are all right!" was the general comment.
+
+Poor Seneca came running to the end of a neighboring dock and took a
+flying leap--linen duster, carpet slippers, and all--down upon the ice.
+He was determined at first to get to his shack on the wharf, for he did
+not see what the boys were doing for him.
+
+Men in the crowd ran to hold the poor old prophet back from what would
+likely have been his doom. He screamed anathemas upon them until they
+led him to where Ruth stood and showed him the great heap of books. Then
+almost immediately he became calm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CORNER HOUSE THANKSGIVING
+
+
+It was truly a Thanksgiving feast at the old Corner House that day, and
+it was enjoyed to the full by all. Nor was there a table in all Milton
+around which sat a more apparently incongruous company.
+
+At first glance one might have thought that the Corner House girls had
+put forth a special effort to gather together a really fantastical
+company to celebrate the holiday. Uncle Rufus, at least, had never
+served quite so odd an assortment of guests during all the years he had
+been in Mr. Peter Stower's employ.
+
+At one end of the table the old Scotch housekeeper presided, in a fresh
+cap and apron. Her hard, rosy face looked as though it had received an
+extra polishing with the huck towel on the kitchen roller.
+
+At the far end of the long board, covered with the best old damask the
+house afforded, and laid with the heavy, sterling plate that Unc' Rufus
+tended so lovingly, and the cut glass of old-fashioned pattern, was
+silver-haired Mr. Howbridge. He was a man very precise in his dress,
+given to the niceties of the toilet in every particular. He wore
+rimless glasses perched on his aristocratic beak of a nose, a well
+cared-for mustache much darker than his hair, and had very piercing
+eyes.
+
+On his right was prim Aunt Sarah--Aunt Sarah, who never seemed to belong
+to the family, who lived so self-centered an existence, but who was sure
+to have her meddling finger in everything that went on in the old Corner
+House, especially if it was desired that she should not.
+
+Aunt Sarah glared across the table at a tall, lean, ascetic-looking man
+in a rusty, old-fashioned, black, tail coat that was a world too wide
+for him across the shoulders, and with his sleek, long hair parted very
+carefully in the middle, and falling below the high collar of the coat.
+
+Those who had never seen Seneca Sprague save in his flapping duster and
+straw hat, would scarcely have recognized him now.
+
+Ruth, after the fire, when the prophet had been made to understand that
+all his possessions for which he really cared were saved, had induced
+him to come home with them to eat the Thanksgiving feast.
+
+"It is fitting that we should give thanks--yea, verily," agreed Seneca,
+his mind rather more muddled than usual by the excitement of the fire.
+"I saw the armies of Armageddon advancing with flame-tipped spears and
+flights of flashing arrows. They were all--all--aimed to overwhelm me.
+But their hands were stayed--they could not prevail against me. Thank
+you, young man," he added, briskly, to Neale O'Neil. "You have a pretty
+wit, and by it you have saved my library--my books that could not be
+duplicated. I have the only Apocrypha extant with notes by the great
+Swedenborg. Do you know the life of George Washington, young man?"
+
+"Pretty well, sir, thank you," said Neale, gravely.
+
+"It is well. Study it. That great being who sired our glorious country,
+is yet to come again. And he will purge the nation with fire and cleanse
+it with hyssop. Verily, it shall come to pass in that day----"
+
+"But we mustn't keep Mrs. MacCall waiting for us, Mr. Sprague," Ruth had
+interrupted him by saying. "You can tell us all about it later."
+
+They had bundled him into a carriage near the burned dock, to hide his
+torn duster and wild appearance, and had brought him to the old Corner
+House--Ruth and Agnes and Neale. There he was soon quieted. Neale helped
+him remove the traces of the struggle he had had with those who kept him
+from going into the fire, and likewise helped him dress for dinner.
+
+Uncle Peter Stower's ancient wardrobe furnished the most of Seneca's
+holiday garb. "Mr. Stower was a meaty man," the prophet said, in some
+scorn. "His girth should have been upon his conscience, for verily he
+lived for the greater part of his life on the fat of the land. His
+latter days were lean ones, it is true; but they could not absolve him
+from his youthful gastronomic sins."
+
+Ruth had some fear that the odd, old fellow might make trouble at the
+table; but Seneca Sprague had not always lived the untamed life he now
+did. He had been well brought up, and had associated with the best
+families of Milton and the county in his younger days.
+
+Mr. Howbridge was surprised to find Seneca Sprague sitting in the
+ancient parlor of the old Corner House when he arrived--an unfriendly
+room which was seldom opened by the girls. But the lawyer shook hands
+with Seneca and told him how glad he was to hear that his library had
+been saved from the fire.
+
+"One may say by a miracle," the prophet declared solemnly. "As Elijah
+was fed by the raven in the wilderness, so was my treasure cared for in
+time of stress."
+
+He talked after that quite reasonably, and when the girls in their
+pretty dresses fluttered to their seats about the table, and with Neale
+O'Neil filled them all, the company being complete, Ruth, looked to
+Seneca to ask a blessing.
+
+His reverent grace, spoken humbly, was most fitting. Linda opened the
+door. A great breath of warm, food-laden air rushed in. Uncle Rufus
+appeared, proudly bearing the great turkey, browned beautifully and
+fairly bursting with tenderness and--dressing!
+
+"Oh-ee!" whispered ecstatically, the smallest Corner House girl. "He
+looks so _noble_! Do--do you s'pose, Tess, that it will _hurt_ him when
+Uncle Rufus carves?"
+
+"My goodness!" exclaimed Neale, "it will hurt us if he doesn't carve the
+turk. I couldn't imagine any greater punishment than to sit here and
+taste the other good things and renege on that handsome bird."
+
+But Seneca Sprague did not hear this comment. He ate heartily of the
+plentiful supply of vegetables; but he would not taste the turkey or the
+suet pudding.
+
+It was a merry feast. They sat long over it. Uncle Rufus set the great
+candelabra on the table and by the wax-light they cracked nuts and drank
+sweet cider, and the younger ones listened to the stories of their
+elders.
+
+Even Aunt Sarah livened up. "My soul and body!" she croaked, with rather
+a sour smile, it must be confessed, "I wonder what Peter Stower would
+say to see me sitting here. Humph! He couldn't keep me out of my home
+forever, could he?"
+
+But nobody made any reply to that statement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+CLOUDS AND SUNSHINE
+
+
+The day following Thanksgiving that year would ever be known as "Black
+Friday" in the annals of Milton school history. And it came about like
+this.
+
+Professor Ware had given notice the Saturday previous that there would
+be two rehearsals on that day of _The Carnation Countess_. The morning
+rehearsal was for the choruses, the dance numbers and tableaux, and
+especially for those halting Thespians whom the professor called "lame
+ducks"--those who had such difficulty in learning their parts.
+
+The afternoon rehearsal was the first full rehearsal--every actor, both
+amateur and professional, must be present, and the play was to be run
+through from the first note of the overture to the final curtain. For
+the first time the scholars would hear the orchestral arrangement of the
+music score.
+
+And right at the start--at the beginning of the morning rehearsal--the
+musical director was balked. Innocent Delight was not present.
+
+"What's the matter with that girl?" demanded the irate professor of
+everybody in general and nobody in particular. "Was Thanksgiving too
+much for her? I expected some of you boys would perform gastronomic
+feats to make the angels tremble. But girls!"
+
+"The Severns went down to Pleasant Cove over Thanksgiving. They haven't
+got home yet," announced a neighbor of the missing Trix.
+
+"What? Gone out of town? And after all I said about the importance of
+to-day's rehearsals!" exclaimed the director. "This is no time for a
+part as important as that of Innocent Delight to be read."
+
+But they had to go on with the play in that halting manner. Trix
+Severn's lines were read; but her absence spoiled the action of each
+scene in which she should have appeared.
+
+"But goodness knows!" snapped Eva Larry, who, with the rest of the
+"penitent sisterhood," as Neale called them, watched the rehearsal,
+"Trix will spoil the play anyway. But won't she get it when she comes
+this afternoon?"
+
+The play halted on to the bitter end. The amateur performers grew tired;
+the director grew fussy. His sarcastic comments toward the end did not
+seem to inspire the young folk to a spirited performance of their parts.
+They were discouraged.
+
+"We should announce this on the bills as a burlesque of _The Carnation
+Countess_," declared Professor Ware, "and as nothing else. Milton people
+will laugh us out of town."
+
+The girls and teachers in the audience realized even better than the
+performers just how bad it was. The little folk were excused, for they
+had all done well, while the director tried his best to whip the others
+into some sort of shape for the afternoon session.
+
+"I know very well that Madam Shaw will refuse to sing her part with a
+background of such blunderers!" exclaimed Professor Ware, bitterly, at
+the last. "Nor will the other professionals be willing to risk their
+reputations, and the play itself, in such a performance. Our time has
+gone for nothing. And if Innocent Delight does not appear for the
+afternoon performance----"
+
+His futile threats made little impression upon the girls and boys. They
+were--for the time--exhausted. Ruth went home in tears--although she had
+not drawn one word or look of critical comment from the sharp-spoken
+director. Tess was very solemn, and continued to repeat her part of
+Swiftwing over and over to herself--although she knew it perfectly.
+
+Dot danced along, saying: "Well! I don't care! _I buzzed_ all right--I
+know I did! Buzz! buzz! buzz-z-z-z!"
+
+"Goodness gracious!" ejaculated the nervous Agnes, who felt for them
+all, though not having a thing to do with the play---- "Goodness
+gracious! you were wishing for a 'buzzer,' Dot Kenway. I don't think you
+need one. Nature must have made a mistake and meant you for a bee,
+anyway. I don't see how you ever came to be born into the Kenway family,
+instead of a bee-hive!"
+
+Dot pouted at that, but quickly changed her expression when she saw
+Sammy Pinkney careering along the street like a young whirlwind. Sammy,
+for his sins, had been forbidden to participate in _The Carnation
+Countess_--not that it seemed to trouble him a bit! Anything that
+occurred in the schoolhouse was trial and tribulation to Master Pinkney.
+They could not fool him into believing differently, just by calling it a
+"play!"
+
+"Oh, bully! bully! bully!" he sang, coming along the street in a "hop,
+skip and a jump pace," the better to show his joy. "Oh, Dot! oh, Tess!
+you never can guess what's happened."
+
+"Something _awful_, I just know," said Tess, "or you wouldn't be so
+glad."
+
+"Huh!" grunted Sammy, stopping in the middle of his fantastic dance, and
+glaring at the next to the youngest Corner House girl, "You wait, Tess
+Kenway! You're 'teacher's pet'; but nobody else likes old Pepperpot. I
+guess it will be in the paper to-night, and everybody will be glad of
+it."
+
+"What has happened to Miss Pepperill?" demanded Ruth, seeing into the
+mystery of the boy's speech--at least, for a little way.
+
+"Then you _ain't_ heard?" crowed Sammy.
+
+"And we're not likely to, if you don't hurry up and say something,"
+snapped Agnes.
+
+"Well!" growled Sammy. "She's hurt-ed. She was run down by an automobile
+on High Street. They wanted to take her to the hospital--the one for
+girls and babies, you know----"
+
+"Oh! Mrs. Eland's hospital!" gasped Tess.
+
+"Yep. But she wouldn't go there. They say she made 'em take her to her
+boarding house. And she's hurt bad. And, oh, goody! there won't be any
+school Monday!" cried the young savage, beginning to dance again.
+
+"Don't you fool yourself!" exclaimed Agnes, for Tess was crying frankly,
+and Dot had a finger in her mouth. "Don't you fool yourself, Sammy
+Pinkney! They'll have plenty of time to find a substitute teacher before
+school opens on Monday."
+
+"Oh, they _won't_!" wailed the boy.
+
+"Yes they will. And I hope it will be somebody a good deal worse than
+Miss Pepperill. So there!"
+
+"Oh, but there _ain't_ nobody worse," said Sammy, with conviction, while
+Tess looked at her older sister with tearful surprise.
+
+"Why, Aggie!" she said sorrowfully. "I hope you don't mean that. 'Cause
+I've got to go to school Monday as well as Sammy."
+
+Tess was really much disturbed over the news of Miss Pepperill's injury.
+She would not wait for luncheon but went straight over to the house
+where her teacher boarded, and inquired for her.
+
+The red-haired, sharp-tongued lady was really quite badly hurt. There
+was a compound fracture of the leg, and Dr. Forsyth feared some injury
+to the brain, for Miss Pepperill's head was seriously cut. Tess learned
+that they had been obliged to shave off all the teacher's red, red hair!
+
+"And that's awful!" she told Dot, on her return. "For goodness only
+knows what color it will be when it grows out again. Miss Lippit (she's
+the landlady where Miss Pepperill boards) showed it to me. And it's
+beautiful, long, long hair."
+
+"Mebbe it will come out like Mrs. MacCall's--pepper-and-salt color,"
+said Dot, reflectively. "We haven't got a pepper-and-salt teacher in
+school, have we?"
+
+Such light reflections as this did not please Tess. She really forgot to
+repeat the part of Swiftwing, the hummingbird, in her anxiety about the
+injured Miss Pepperill.
+
+At two o'clock the big rehearsal was called.
+
+"I don't believe I will go back with you," Agnes said, to Ruth. "I can't
+sit there and hear Trix murder that part. Oh, dear!"
+
+"I bet you won't ever eat any more strawberries," chuckled Neale, who
+had come over the back fence of the Corner House premises, that being
+his nearest way to school.
+
+"Don't speak to me of them!" cried Agnes. "A piece of Mrs. MacCall's
+strawberry shortcake would give me the colic, I know--_just to look at
+it_!"
+
+"Oh, you'll get all over that before the strawberry season comes around
+again," her older sister said placidly. "You'd better come, Aggie."
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, yes, Aggie, do come!" urged Neale. "Be a sport. Come and see and
+hear us slaughter _The Carnation Countess_. It'll be more fun than
+moping here alone."
+
+"Well, I'll just cover my eyes and ears when Innocent Delight comes on,"
+Agnes declared.
+
+But Trix was not at the rehearsal. Information from the Severn house
+revealed the fact that the family was still at Pleasant Cove. It was
+evident that Trix's interest in _The Carnation Countess_ had flagged.
+
+Professor Ware gathered the principal professionals around him. His
+speech was serious. They had given the performance in several cities and
+large towns, and had whipped into shape some very unpromising material;
+but the director admitted that he was discouraged with the outlook here.
+
+"I am inclined to say right here and now: Give it up. Not that the
+children as a whole do not average as high in quality as those of other
+schools; but the talent is lacking to take the amateur parts which have
+always been assigned to the girls and boys. The girls' parts are
+especially weak.
+
+"One or two bad parts might be ignored--overlooked by a friendly
+audience. But here is this Innocent Delight girl, not here at all at
+the most important rehearsal we have had. And she is _awful_ in her
+part, anyway; I admit it.
+
+"I was misinformed regarding her. I received a note before the parts
+were given out, stating that she had had much experience in amateur
+theatricals. I do not believe that she ever even acted in parlor
+charades," added the professor, in disgust. "She must have a friendly
+letter-writer who is a professional booster.
+
+"Well, it is too late to change such a part, I am afraid. But to read
+her lines this afternoon, all through the play, will cripple us
+terribly. Even if she is a stick, she can look the part, and walk
+through it."
+
+Somebody tugged at the professor's sleeve. When he looked around he saw
+a flaxen-haired boy with a very eager face.
+
+"I say, Professor! there's a girl here that knows Trix Severn's part
+better than she does herself."
+
+"What's this? Another booster?" demanded the director, sorrowfully.
+
+"Just try her! She knows it all by heart. And she's a blonde."
+
+"Why haven't I seen her before, if she's so good? Is she in the chorus?"
+demanded the doubtful professor.
+
+"She hasn't had any part in the play at all--yet," declared Neale
+O'Neil, banking all upon this chance for Agnes. "But you just try her
+out!"
+
+"She knows the lines?"
+
+"Perfectly," declared the boy, earnestly.
+
+He dared say no more, but he watched the professor's face sharply.
+
+"I don't suppose she can do any more harm than the other," muttered the
+desperate director. "Send her up here, boy. Odd I should not have known
+there was an understudy for Innocent Delight."
+
+Neale went down to the row of seats in which Agnes and a few of the
+"penitent sisterhood" sat. "Say!" he said, grinning at Agnes and
+whispering into her pretty ear, "Now's your chance to show us what you
+can do."
+
+"What do you mean, Neale O'Neil?" she gasped.
+
+"The professor is looking for somebody to walk through Trix's part--just
+for this rehearsal, of course."
+
+"Oh, Neale!" exclaimed the Corner House girl, clasping her hands.
+"They'd never let me do it."
+
+"I don't believe you can," laughed Neale. "But you can try if you want
+to. He told me to send you up to him. There he stands on the stage now."
+
+Agnes rose up giddily. At first she felt that she could not stand.
+Everything seemed whirling about her. Neale, with his past experience of
+the circus in his mind, had an uncanny appreciation of her feelings.
+
+"Buck up!" he whispered. "Don't have stage-fright. You don't have to
+say half the words if you don't want to."
+
+She flashed him a wonderful look. Her vision cleared and she smiled.
+Right there and then Agnes, by some subtle power that had been given her
+when she was born into this world, became changed into the character of
+Innocent Delight--the part which she had already learned so well.
+
+She had sat here throughout each rehearsal and listened to Professor
+Ware's comments and the stage manager's instructions. She knew the cues
+perfectly. There was not an inflection or pose in the part that she had
+not perfected her voice and body in. The other girls watched her move
+toward the stage curiously--Neale with a feeling that he had never
+really known his little friend before.
+
+"Hello, who's this?" asked one of the male professionals when Agnes came
+to the group upon the stage.
+
+"The very type!" breathed Madam Shaw, who had just come upon the
+platform in her street costume. "Professor! why did you not get _this_
+girl for Innocent Delight?"
+
+"I have," returned the director, drily. "You are the one who has studied
+the part?" he asked Agnes.
+
+"Yes, sir," she said, and all her bashfulness left her.
+
+"Open your first scene," commanded the professor, bruskly.
+
+The command might have confused a professional--especially when the
+player had had no opportunity of rehearsing save in secret. But Agnes
+had forgotten everything but the character she was to play. She opened
+her lips and began with a vivacity and dash that made the professionals
+smile and applaud when she was through.
+
+"Wait!" commanded the professor, immediately. "If you can do that as
+well in the play----"
+
+"Oh! but, sir," said Agnes, suddenly coming to herself, and feeling her
+heart and courage sink. "I can't act in the play--not really."
+
+"Why not?" he snapped.
+
+"I am forbidden."
+
+"By whom, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Mr. Marks. We girls of the basket ball team cannot act. It is a
+punishment."
+
+"Indeed?" said the director, grimly. "And are all the girls Mr. Marks
+sees fit to punish at this special time, as able as you are to take
+part?"
+
+"Ye-yes, sir," quavered Agnes.
+
+"Well!" It was a most expressive observation. But the director said
+nothing further about Mr. Marks and his discipline. He merely turned and
+cried:
+
+"Ready for the first act! Clear the stage."
+
+To Madam Shaw he whispered: "Of course, one swallow doesn't make a
+summer."
+
+"But one good, smart girl like this one may come near to saving the day
+for you, Professor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+SWIFTWING, THE HUMMINGBIRD
+
+
+The orchestra burst into a low hum of sweet sounds. Agnes had heard them
+tuning up under the stage for some time; but back in the little hall
+where the amateur performers were gathered in readiness for their cues,
+she had not realized that the orchestra members had taken their places.
+
+Having watched the rehearsals so closely since they began, she could now
+imagine the tall director with his baton, beating time for the opening
+bars.
+
+The overture swelled into the grand march, and then went on, giving a
+taste of the marches, dances, and singing numbers, finally with a crash
+of sound, announcing the moment when the curtain, at the real
+performance, would go up.
+
+"Now!" hissed the stage manager, beckoning on the first chorus.
+
+Innocent Delight was in it. Innocent Delight went up the steps and into
+the wings with the others, as in a dream. As she had not rehearsed with
+the chorus before, she made a little mistake in her position in the
+line; and she failed to keep quite good time in the dancing step.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" gasped Carrie Poole. "Now you're going to spoil it all,
+Aggie Kenway! You'll be worse than Trix, I suppose!"
+
+Agnes merely smiled at her. Nothing could disturb her poise just then.
+_She was going to act!_
+
+They saw the boys across the stage, ready, too, to enter--some of them
+grinning and foolish looking; others very serious. Neale smiled at Agnes
+and waved his hand encouragingly. Her confident pose delighted him.
+
+Now they were on! It was easy, after all, to keep step with the music.
+She knew the words of the opening song perfectly. Agnes had a clear, if
+light contralto voice; the alto part was easy for her to sing.
+
+With a vim that seemed not to have been in the chorus before, the number
+came to a finish. The girls and boys fell back. Innocent Delight was in
+the centre of the stage, ready to welcome the Carnation Countess.
+
+Agnes was slow in speaking; her words seemed to drag a bit. Madam Shaw
+was waiting impatiently to come on. But the stage manager whispered
+shrilly:
+
+"Quite right, my dear! quite right! The Countess is supposed to come on
+in a sedan chair, and you must give her time."
+
+The professionals noted the girl's familiarity with the stage
+instructions; always, wherever the manager had explained in the earlier
+rehearsals the reason for some stage change, Innocent Delight had the
+matter pat. The action of the play was not retarded in any particular
+for the new girl. And her ability in handling the character of the
+blithe, joyous, light-hearted girl was most natural.
+
+Somehow, this chief amateur part going so well, pulled the others up to
+the mark. But there was still much to be wished for in the case of
+Cheerful Grigg, the twins, Sunbeam and Moonbeam, and Lily White.
+
+"I'd like to get hold of some of those other girls that Mr. Marks
+considers it his duty to punish," growled the professor. "What's all
+this foolishness about, anyway? Doesn't he want the play to be a
+success?"
+
+He said this to Miss Lederer, the principal's assistant. She shook her
+head, sadly.
+
+"I am sorry that you can't have them, Professor," she said. "But of
+course, this is only temporary for Agnes."
+
+"What's that?" he demanded angrily.
+
+"Why, she cannot play Innocent Delight for you," the teacher said
+firmly. "I am not sure that Mr. Marks will like it as it is."
+
+"He's _got_ to like it!" interrupted the professor. "I've just got to
+have the girl--there are no two ways about it. I tell you, without her
+the schools might as well give up trying to put on the play. That other
+girl, who was wished on me, is not fitted for the part at all."
+
+"But you have given it to her."
+
+"And I can take it away; you watch me!" snapped the director. "And I am
+going to have this Agnes, as you call her, Marks or no Marks!"
+
+"Is that a pun?" the teacher asked archly. "For that is why Agnes Kenway
+cannot act in the play. Bad marks."
+
+"What's her heinous crime?" demanded the professor.
+
+"Stealing," said the assistant principal, with twinkling eyes.
+
+"Stealing! What did she steal?"
+
+"Strawberries."
+
+"My goodness! I'll pay for them," rejoined the director, quickly.
+
+"I am afraid that will not satisfy Mr. Marks."
+
+"What will satisfy him, then?" demanded the professor. "For I am
+determined to have that girl play Innocent Delight for me, or else I
+will not put on the play. I would rather shoulder the expense thus far
+incurred--all of it--than to go on with a lot of numskulls such as seem
+to have been selected for many of these important roles. For pity's sake
+let me have at least one girl who shows talent."
+
+Meanwhile Madam Shaw, the prima donna, came to Agnes after it was all
+over and put her arms tight around the young girl's shoulders.
+
+"Who are you, my dear?" she asked, looking kindly down upon Agnes'
+blushing face.
+
+"Agnes Kenway, ma'am."
+
+"Oh! one of the Corner House girls!" cried the lady. "I have heard of
+you sisters. Three of you were in the play from the first. And why not
+you, before?"
+
+"Oh!" fluttered Agnes, now waking up from the beautiful dream in which
+she had lived from two o'clock till five. "I am not in it--really. I
+cannot play the part in the opera house."
+
+"Why not, pray?" demanded Madam Shaw in some surprise.
+
+"Because I have broken some rules and am being punished," admitted
+Agnes.
+
+Madam Shaw hid a smile quickly. "Punished at home?" she asked gravely.
+
+"Oh, no! There is nobody to punish us at home."
+
+"No?"
+
+"No. We have no mother or father. There is only Ruth, and we none of us
+want to displease Ruth. It wouldn't be fair."
+
+"Who is Ruth?"
+
+"The oldest," said Agnes. "She is in the play. But she hasn't a very
+important part. I think she might have been given a better one!"
+
+"But _you_? Who is punishing you? Your teacher?"
+
+"Mr. Marks."
+
+"No? Not really?"
+
+"Yes. The basket ball team and some other girls can only look on--we
+can't act. He said so. And--and we deserve it," stammered Agnes.
+
+"Oh, indeed! But does the poor Carnation Countess deserve it?" demanded
+Madam Shaw, with asperity. "I wonder what Mr. Marks can be thinking of?"
+
+However, everybody seemed to feel happier and less discouraged about the
+play when this rehearsal was over; and Agnes went home in a seventh
+heaven of delight.
+
+"I don't care so much now if I never have a chance again," she said,
+over and over again. "I've _shown_ them that I can act."
+
+But Ruth began to be anxious. She said to Mrs. MacCall that evening:
+"Suppose, when Agnes gets older, she should determine to be a player?
+Wouldn't it be _awful_?"
+
+The old Scotch woman bit off her thread reflectively. "Tut, tut!" she
+said, at last. "That's borrowing trouble, my dear. And you're a bit
+old-fashioned, Ruthie Kenway. Perhaps being an actress isn't so awful a
+thing as we used to think. 'Tis at least a way of earning one's living;
+and it seems now that all girls must work."
+
+"Didn't they work in your day, Mrs. MacCall?" asked Ruth, slyly.
+
+"Not to be called so," was the prompt reply. "Those that had to go into
+mills and factories were looked down upon a wee bit, I am afraid. Others
+of us only learned to scrub and cook and sew and stand a man's tantrums
+for our living. It was considered more respectable to marry a bad man
+than to work for an honest wage."
+
+Saturday Agnes was not called upon at all. She heard that Trix was at
+home again; but there were no rehearsals of the speaking parts of _The
+Carnation Countess_. Only the dances and ensembles of the choruses were
+tried out in the afternoon.
+
+The girls heard nothing further regarding the re-distribution of the
+parts--if there were to be such changes made. They only understood that
+the play would be given, in spite of the director's recent despairing
+words.
+
+And it was known, too, that the following rehearsals would be given on
+the stage of the opera house itself. The scenery was ready, and on
+Saturday morning of the next week the first costume rehearsal would be
+undertaken.
+
+Dot and her little friends were quite over-wrought about their bee
+dresses. They had learned to dance and "drone" in unison; now they were
+all to be turned into fat brown bees, with yellow heads and stripes on
+their papier-mache bodies, and transparent wings.
+
+Tess, as Swiftwing, the chief hummingbird, was a brilliant sight indeed.
+Only one thing marred Tess Kenway's complete happiness. It was Miss
+Pepperill's illness.
+
+For the unfortunate teacher was very ill at her boarding house. Her head
+had been hurt when the automobile knocked her down. And while her broken
+bones might mend well, Dr. Forsyth was much troubled regarding the
+patient.
+
+The Corner House girls heard that Miss Pepperill was quite out of her
+head. She babbled about things that she never would have spoken of in
+her right mind. And while she had so vigorously refused to be taken to
+the Women's and Children's Hospital when she was hurt, she talked about
+Mrs. Eland, the matron, a good deal of the time.
+
+"I'm going to see my Mrs. Eland and tell her that Miss Pepperill asks
+for her and if she has found her sister," Tess announced, after a long
+conference with the teacher's landlady, who was a kindly, if not very
+wise maiden lady.
+
+"I see no harm in your telling Mrs. Eland," Ruth agreed. "Perhaps Mrs.
+Eland would go to see her, if it would do the poor thing any good."
+
+"Why do you say 'poor thing' about Miss Pepperill, Ruthie?" demanded
+Dot, the inquisitive. "Has she lost all her money?"
+
+"Goodness me! no, child," replied the oldest Corner House girl; nor did
+she explain why she had said "poor thing" in referring to the sick
+teacher. But everybody was saying the same; they did not expect her to
+live.
+
+The substitute teacher who took Miss Pepperill's place in school had
+possibly been warned against Sammy Pinkney; for that embryo pirate
+found, at the end of the first day of such substitution, that he was no
+better off than he had been under Miss Pepperill's regime.
+
+Tess was very serious these days. She was troubled about the teacher who
+was ill (for it was the child's nature to love whether she was loved in
+return or no), her lessons had to be kept up to the mark, and, in
+addition, there was her part as Swiftwing.
+
+She knew her steps and her songs and her speeches, perfectly. But upon
+the Saturday morning when the dances were rehearsed, Tess found that
+there was more to the part than she had at first supposed.
+
+There was to be a tableau in which--at the back of the stage--Swiftwing
+in glistening raiment, was the central figure. A light scaffolding was
+built behind a gaudy lace "drop" and to the steps of this scaffolding,
+from the wings on either side of the stage, the birds and butterflies
+flew in their brilliant costumes to group themselves back of the gauze
+of the painted drop.
+
+Tess was a bit terrified when she was first taken into the flies, for
+Swiftwing first of all was to come floating down from above to hover
+over and finally to rest upon a great carnation.
+
+Of course, Tess saw that she was to stand quite securely upon the very
+top step of the scaffolding. A strong wire was attached to her belt at
+the back so that she could not possibly fall.
+
+Below, and on either side of Tess, was a smaller girl, each costumed as
+a butterfly. These were tossed up to their stations by the strong arms
+of stage-hands. They could not be held by wires as Tess was, for their
+wings were made to vibrate slowly all through the scene.
+
+On lower steps others of the brilliantly dressed children--all
+butterflies and winged insects--were grouped. From the front the picture
+thus formed was a very beautiful one indeed; but the children had to go
+over and over the scene to learn to do their part skillfully and to
+secure the right effect from the front.
+
+"Aren't you scared up there, little girl?" one of the women playing in
+the piece asked Tess.
+
+"No-o," said the Corner House girl, slowly. "I'm not scared. But I shall
+be glad each time when the tableau is over. You see, these other little
+girls have no belt and wire to hold them, as I have."
+
+"But you are so much higher than the others!"
+
+"No, ma'am. It only looks so. It's what the stage man said was an
+optical delusion," Tess replied, meaning "illusion." "I can touch those
+other girls on either side of me--yes, ma'am."
+
+And she did touch them. Each time that she went through the scene, and
+the butterflies' wings vibrated as they bent forward, Tess' hands, which
+were out of sight of the audience, clutched at the other girls' sashes.
+
+Tess was a sturdy girl for her age. Her hands at the waists of the two
+butterflies steadied them as they posed on this day for the final
+rehearsal of the difficult tableau.
+
+"That's it!" called out the manager. "Now! Hold it! Lights!"
+
+The glare of the spotlight shot down upon the grouped children from
+above the proscenium arch.
+
+"Steady!" shouted the stage manager again, for the whole group behind
+the gauze drop seemed to be wavering.
+
+"Hold that pose!" repeated the man, commandingly.
+
+But it was not the children who moved. There was the creaking sound of
+parting timbers. Somebody from the back shouted a warning--but too late.
+
+"Down! All of you down to the stage!"
+
+Those on the lower steps of the scaffolding jumped. The stage hands ran
+in to catch the others; but the higher little girls could not leap
+without risking both life and limb!
+
+A pandemonium of warning cries and shrieks of alarm followed. The
+scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward through the drop which
+retarded it at first, but finally tearing the drop from its fastenings
+in the flies.
+
+Swiftwing, the hummingbird, did not add her little voice to the general
+uproar. She was safely held by the wire cable hooked to her belt at the
+back.
+
+But the butterflies were helpless. The men who tried to seize them from
+the rear could not do so at first because the scaffolding structure fell
+out upon the stage.
+
+The Corner House girl, frightened as she was, miraculously preserved her
+presence of mind. As she had already done before during the rehearsals,
+she seized the sashes of her two smaller schoolmates at the first alarm.
+Their feet slipped from the foothold, but Tess held them.
+
+[Illustration: The scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward
+through the drop. Page 238]
+
+Neale had taught Tess, and even Dot, how to use their strength to better
+advantage than most little girls. Tess was sure of her own safety in
+this emergency, and she allowed her body to bend forward almost double,
+as the two frightened little butterflies slipped from the falling
+scaffolding.
+
+For a dreadful moment or two, their entire weight hung from Tess
+Kenway's clutching hands. Her shoulders felt as though they were being
+dislocated; but she gritted her teeth and held on.
+
+And then two of the men caught the little, fluttering butterflies by
+their ankles.
+
+"Let 'em come!" yelled one of the men.
+
+Tess loosed her grasp as the scaffolding crashed to the stage. The last
+to be lowered, Swiftwing came down, so frightened she could not think
+for a moment where she was.
+
+"Oh, Tess, darling!" gasped Agnes.
+
+"Sister's brave little girl!" murmured Ruth.
+
+"I--I didn't spoil the tableau, did I?" Tess asked.
+
+"Spoil it? My goodness, Tess Kenway," shouted Neale O'Neil, who,
+likewise, had run to her, "you made the biggest hit of the whole show!
+If you could do that at every performance _The Carnation Countess_ would
+certain sure be a big success!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE FINAL REHEARSAL
+
+
+Before the tableau in which Tess Kenway had so covered herself with
+glory was again rehearsed, the scaffolding was rebuilt as a series of
+broad steps and made much lower.
+
+Tess was not to be frightened out of playing her part as Swiftwing, the
+hummingbird.
+
+"No. I was not in danger," she reported to Mrs. Eland, when she and Dot
+went to see the gray lady as usual the next Monday afternoon. "The wire
+held me up so that I could not possibly fall. It was only the other two
+girls who might have fallen. But they hurt my arms."
+
+"If you had been a _real_ hummingbird," put in the practical Dot, "you
+could have caught one of them with your beak and the other in your
+claws. Butterflies aren't very heavy."
+
+"Those butterflies were heavy enough," sighed her sister.
+
+"It was splendid of you, Tess!" cried Mrs. Eland. "I am proud of you."
+
+"So are we," announced Dot. "But Aunt Sarah says we ought not to praise
+her too much or maybe she'll get biggity. _What's_ 'biggity'?"
+
+"Something I'm sure Tess will never be," said the matron, hugging Tess
+again. "Why so sober, dear? You ought to be glad you helped save those
+two little girls from a serious fall."
+
+"I am," Tess replied.
+
+"Then, what is the matter?"
+
+"It's Miss Pepperill."
+
+"Oh, dear me!" murmured Dot. "She fusses over that old Miss Pepperpot as
+though she were one of the family."
+
+"Is she really worse, dear?" asked Mrs. Eland, softly, of Tess.
+
+"They think she is. And--and, Mrs. Eland! She does call for you so
+pitifully! Miss Lippit told me so."
+
+"Calls for _me_?" gasped the matron, paling.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. Miss Lippit says she doesn't know why. Miss Pepperill never
+knew you very well before she was hurt. But I told Miss Lippit that I
+could understand it well enough," went on Tess, eagerly. "You'd be just
+the person I'd want to nurse me if I were sick."
+
+"Thank you, my dear," smiled Mrs. Eland, beginning to breathe freely
+once more.
+
+"You see, Miss Lippit knows Miss Pepperill pretty well. She knew her out
+West."
+
+"Out West?" repeated Mrs. Eland.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. Miss Lippit says that isn't her real name. She was a
+'dopted child."
+
+"Who was?" demanded the matron, all in a flutter again.
+
+"Miss Pepperill. She was brought up by a family named Pepperill. Seems
+funny," said Tess, gravely. "_She_ lost her mother and father in a
+fire."
+
+"I guess that's why her hair is red," said Dot, not believing her own
+reasoning, but desiring to be in the conversation.
+
+Mrs. Eland was silent for some minutes. "She isn't mad, is she?"
+whispered Dot to Tess.
+
+But the latter respected her friend's silence. Finally the matron said
+pleasantly enough: "I am going out when you children go home. You must
+show me where this school teacher of yours lives. If I can be of any
+service----"
+
+She put on her bonnet and the long gray cloak in a few minutes, and the
+three set forth from the hospital. Dot clung to one hand and Tess to the
+other of the little gray woman, as they went to Miss Lippit's boarding
+house.
+
+"This is Mrs. Eland," Tess said to the spinster, who was both landlady
+and friend of the injured school teacher. "She is my friend and the
+matron of the hospital where Miss Pepperill went with us one day."
+
+"When she carried _my_ flowers and gave some to the children," muttered
+Dot, who had never gotten over that.
+
+"I'm glad to see you, Mrs. Eland," said Miss Lippit. "I do not know why
+Miss Pepperill calls for you so much. She is a singularly friendless
+woman."
+
+"I thought she had always lived in Milton?" said the matron, in an
+inquiring way.
+
+"Oh, no, ma'am. She lived in the town I came from. We children always
+thought she was Mr. and Mrs. Pepperill's granddaughter; but it seemed
+not. She was picked up by them wandering about in Liston after the big
+fire."
+
+Mrs. Eland repeated the name of the Western city, holding hard to a
+chairback the while, and watching Miss Lippit hungrily.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said the landlady. "We learned all about it. Miss
+Pepperill was so small she didn't know her own name--only 'Teeny.'"
+
+"'Teeny'!" repeated Mrs. Eland, pale to her lips.
+
+"She had a sister. She remembered her quite plainly. Marion. When Miss
+Pepperill was younger she was always expecting to meet that sister
+somewhere. But I haven't heard her say anything about it of late years."
+
+"Show--show me where the poor thing lies," murmured Mrs. Eland.
+
+They went into the bedroom. Miss Pepperill, her head looking very
+strange indeed with nothing but bandages upon it, sat up suddenly in
+bed.
+
+"Mrs. Eland! isn't it?" she said weakly. "Pleased to meet you. You are
+little Tess Kenway's friend. Tell me!" she cried, clasping her hands,
+"did you find your sister, Mrs. Eland?"
+
+The matron ran with streaming eyes to the bed and folded the poor,
+pain-racked body in her arms. "Yes, yes!" she sobbed. "I've found her!
+I've found her!"
+
+The two smallest Corner House girls did not see this meeting; but they
+brought home the report from Miss Lippit that Mrs. Eland was going to
+make arrangements to stay all night with Miss Pepperill, and perhaps
+longer. Her work at the hospital would have to be neglected for a time.
+
+These busy days, however, the young folk were neglecting nothing which
+was connected with the forthcoming benefit for the Women's and
+Children's Hospital. _The Carnation Countess_ was _not_ to be a failure.
+
+The changes made in the assignment of the speaking parts caused some
+little heartburnings; but the director was determined in the matter.
+First of all he brought Mr. Marks to his way of thinking.
+
+"I won't give the play if I can't have my own Innocent Delight, Cheerful
+Grigg, and some of the others," said the director, firmly.
+
+There was good reason for taking the role away from Trix Severn--she had
+neglected rehearsals. Nevertheless, she was very much excited when she
+learned that the part had been given to Agnes Kenway, who was making
+such a success of it.
+
+Miss Severn, in tears, went to the principal of the Milton High School
+and laid her trouble before him. Mr. Marks listened grimly and then
+showed her the letter purporting to come from the proprietor of
+Strawberry Farm, in which the girls who had raided the farmer's patch
+were named--excluding herself.
+
+Beside this letter he put a specimen of Trix's own handwriting. It
+chanced to be the note which had suggested Trix for the part of Innocent
+Delight in the play.
+
+"It strikes me, Miss Severn," said the principal, sourly, "that you are
+getting to be a ready letter writer. Don't deny the authorship of these
+scripts. Your teachers are all agreed that you wrote them both.
+
+"This one to the professor is reprehensible enough. I am sorry that a
+girl of the Milton High School should write such a note. But this
+other," and his voice grew very stern, "is criminal--yes, criminal!
+
+"I have learned from Mr. Buckham personally, that your father's
+automobile was stalled one day in front of his house and that you went
+in and met his wife, who is an invalid.
+
+"You must have had it in your mind then to make trouble for your
+schoolmates, and learning that Mr. Buckham did not write himself, you
+stole a sheet of his letter paper, and wrote this contemptible screed.
+
+"I shall tell your parents of your action. I do not feel that it is
+within my province to punish you for such a contemptible thing. However,
+knowing that you have been a traitor to your mates, I withdraw my order
+for their punishment on the spot. I never have, and never will, accept
+the evidence of a traitor in a matter of this character.
+
+"As Mr. Buckham himself holds no hard feelings about the foolish prank
+of last May, I shall say no more about it. But the contempt in which
+your schoolmates must hold you, if they learn that you wrote this
+letter, should be its own punishment."
+
+Agnes and the others, however, paid little attention to Trix Severn.
+Agnes knew, and the others suspected, that Trix was the one who had
+told; but the Corner House girl felt that she had deserved the
+punishment she received, and was deeply grateful to Mr. Marks for
+withdrawing the order against her playing in _The Carnation Countess_.
+
+Eva got the part of Cheerful Grigg; some of the other members of the
+basket ball team obtained good parts, too. They studied hard and were
+able to act creditably at the final and dress rehearsal.
+
+The play was to be given on three nights and one afternoon of Christmas
+week. School was closed for the holidays, and little was talked of or
+thought about among the Corner House girls and their mates, but the
+play.
+
+"I hope I won't spoil the play," said Tess, with a worried air. "And I
+hope we will make--oh! lots and lots of money for the hospital, so that
+Mrs. Eland can stay there. For now, you know, with her sister sick,
+she'll need her salary more than ever."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+A GREAT SUCCESS
+
+
+Miss Pepperill was not going to die. Dr. Forsyth made that good prophecy
+soon after Mrs. Eland had taken on herself the nursing of her strangely
+met sister.
+
+The school teacher--so grim and secretive by nature--had been in a fever
+of worry and uncertainty long before the accident that had stretched her
+on this bed of illness. The relief her mind secured when her sister,
+Marion, and she were reunited did much to aid her recovery.
+
+Nobody would have suspected that the calm, demure, little gray woman and
+the assertive, sharp-tongued school teacher were sisters; but the
+evidence of their own childish remembrances was conclusive. And that
+little Mrs. Eland should be the older of the two was likewise
+astounding.
+
+There was still a sad secret on Mrs. Eland's heart. Mr. and Mrs. Buckham
+knew it. The smallest Corner House girl had prodded the doubt of her
+father's honesty to the surface of the hospital matron's mind.
+
+"There ain't no fool like an old fool, it's my bounden duty to say," Mr.
+Bob Buckham remarked on the Monday of Christmas week, as he warmed his
+hands before the open fire on the hearth of the old Corner House sitting
+room.
+
+He had come to town ostensibly to bring the Corner House girls'
+Christmas goose--a noble bird which Ruth had picked out of his flock
+herself on a recent visit to Strawberry Farm. But he confessed to
+another errand in Milton.
+
+"I'd no business to talk out like I done about Abe and Lem Aden that
+first day you children was at our house. But I've allus hugged that
+injury to my breast. Marm says I ain't no business to, and I know she's
+right. But it hurt me dreadfully when I was a boy to lose my marm.
+
+"The rascality lay between old Lem and Abe. Course we couldn't never
+prove anything on Lem, and he never had a good word himself for his
+brother. I read his letters to Abe--Mrs. Eland, she showed 'em to
+me--and there wasn't a word in 'em about my father's five hundred."
+
+"Oh, dear me!" Ruth replied, "I wish it could be cleared up for the sake
+of Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill. You don't care about the money now,
+Mr. Buckham."
+
+"No. Thank the good Lord, I don't. And as I say, I blame myself for ever
+mentioning it before you gals."
+
+"'Little pitchers have big ears,'" quoted Agnes.
+
+At that Dot flared up. "I'm not a little pitcher! And I haven't got big
+ears!" The smallest Corner House girl knew now that her ill-timed
+remarks during her first call with Tess on Mrs. Eland had, somehow,
+made trouble. "How'd I know that Lem--Lemon Aden's brother was Mrs.
+Eland's father? He might have been her uncle."
+
+They had to laugh at Dot's vehement defense; but Mr. Bob Buckham went
+on: "My fault, I tell ye--my fault. But I believe it's going to be all
+cleared up."
+
+"How?" asked Agnes, quickly.
+
+"And will my Mrs. Eland feel better in her mind?" Tess asked gravely.
+
+"That's what she will," declared the farmer, vigorously. "She told me
+about the old papers and the book left by her Uncle Lemuel over there to
+the Quoharis poorfarm where he died. I got a letter from her to the
+townfarm keeper, and I drove over and got 'em the other day.
+
+"Like ter not got 'em at all--old Lem being dead nigh fifteen years now.
+Wal! Marm and me's been looking over that little book. Lem mebbe was a
+leetle crazy--'specially 'bout money matters, and toward the end of his
+life. You'd think, to read what he'd writ down, that he died possessed
+of a lot of property instead of being town's poor. That was his
+foolishness.
+
+"But 'way back, when he was a much younger man, and his brother Abe got
+scart over a trick he'd played about a horse trade and went West (the
+man who was tricked threatened to do him bodily harm), what old Lem
+wrote in that old diary was easy enough understood.
+
+"There's some letters from Abe, too. Put two and two together,"
+concluded Mr. Buckham, "and it's easy to see where my pap's five hundred
+dollars went to. It was left by Abe all right in Lem's hands; but it
+stuck to them hands!"
+
+"Oh!" cried Agnes, "what a wicked man that Lemuel Aden must have been."
+
+"Nateral born miser. Hated ter give up a penny he didn't hafter give up.
+But them two women--wonderful how they come together after all these
+years--them two women needn't worry their souls no longer about that
+five hundred dollars. I never heard as folks could be held accountable
+for their uncle's sins."
+
+That was the way the old farmer made Mrs. Eland see it, too. After all,
+she could only be grateful to the two smallest Corner House girls for
+bringing her and her sister together.
+
+"If I had not taught Tess the old rhyme:
+
+    "'First William, the Norman,
+      Then William, the son,'"
+
+the matron of the Women's and Children's Hospital declared, "and Tess
+had not recited it in school, Teeny, you would never have remembered it
+and felt the strange drawing toward me that you did feel."
+
+"And if you hadn't met that child, I have an idea that you'd have lost
+your position at this hospital--and then where'd we be?" said the
+convalescent Miss Pepperill, sitting propped up in her chair in the
+matron's room at the institution in question. "That child, Tess,
+certainly started all the interest now being shown in this hospital."
+
+That Monday night was the first public presentation of the play for the
+benefit of the hospital. Few were more anxious or more excited before
+the curtain went up, for the success of _The Carnation Countess_, than
+the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil; but there was in store for them
+in the immediate future much more excitement than this of performing in
+the play, all of which will be narrated in the next volume of the
+series, to be entitled, "The Corner House Girls' Odd Find: Where They
+Made It; and What the Strange Discovery Led To."
+
+Ruth Kenway felt a share of responsibility for the success of the play,
+as she naturally would for any matter in which she had even the smallest
+part. It was Ruth's way to be "cumbered by many cares." Mr. Howbridge
+sometimes jokingly called her "Martha."
+
+Dot was only desirous of singing her "bee" song with the other children,
+and then hurrying home where she might continue her work on a wonderful
+Christmas outfit for her Alice-doll. Alice was to have a "coming out
+party" during the holiday week, and positively _had_ to have some new
+clothes. Besides, _The Carnation Countess_ had become rather a stale
+affair for the smallest Corner House girl by this time.
+
+Tess seriously hoped she would do nothing in her part of Swiftwing, the
+hummingbird, to detract from the performance. Tess did not take herself
+at all seriously as an actor; she only desired--as she always did--to do
+what she had to do, right.
+
+As for Agnes, she was truly filled with delight. The fly-away's very
+heart and soul was in the character she played. She lived the part of
+Innocent Delight.
+
+She truly did well in this first performance. No stage fright did she
+experience. From her first word spoken in the centre of the stage while
+Madam Shaw was being borne in by the Sedan men, till the last word she
+spoke in the final act of the play, Agnes Kenway acted her part with
+credit.
+
+In truth, as a whole, the Milton school pupils did well in the play. The
+professor's fears were not fulfilled. Milton people did not by any
+means, laugh the actors out of town.
+
+Instead, the packed house of the first night was repeated on the second
+evening. The matinee on the third day, which was given at popular
+prices, was overcrowded--they had to stop selling admission tickets.
+While the third and last evening saw a repetition of the crowds at the
+other performances.
+
+The local papers gave much space each day to the benefit, and their
+criticisms of the amateur players made the hearts of boys and girls
+alike, glad.
+
+The reports from the ticket office were, after all, the main thing. It
+was soon seen that a goodly sum would be made for the Women's and
+Children's Hospital. In the end it amounted to more than three thousand
+dollars.
+
+"Why, _that_ will give the hospital a new lease of life! Dr. Forsyth
+said so," Agnes declared at the dinner table the day after the last
+performance.
+
+"It will pay Mrs. Eland's salary for a long time," Tess remarked, with a
+sigh of satisfaction.
+
+"I don't know but that sounds rather selfish, after all, dear," Ruth
+said, smiling at sober little Tess.
+
+"What does, Sister?"
+
+"It seems that all _you_ care about the hospital is that Mrs. Eland
+shall get her wages."
+
+"Yes. I s'pose that's my special interest in it," admitted Tess, slowly.
+"But then, if my Mrs. Eland is there as matron, the hospital is bound to
+do a great deal of good."
+
+"Oh! wisdom of the ancients!" laughed Agnes.
+
+"Quite true, my dear," commented Mrs. MacCall. "Your Mrs. Eland is a
+fine woman. I've always said that."
+
+"Everybody doesn't agree with you," said Ruth, smiling.
+
+"Who doesn't like Mrs. Eland?" demanded Tess, quite excited.
+
+"Our neighbor, Sammy Pinkney," Ruth replied, laughing again. "I heard
+him talking about her this very morning, and what he said was not
+complimentary."
+
+Tess was quite flushed. "Sammy gave us Billy Bumps," she said sternly,
+"and Billy is a very good goat."
+
+"Except when he eats up poor Seneca Sprague's hair," chuckled Agnes.
+
+"He is a _very_ good goat," repeated Tess. "But if Sammy says my Mrs.
+Eland isn't the very nicest lady there is--well--he can take his old
+goat back--so now!"
+
+"What did he say, Ruthie?" asked Agnes.
+
+"I heard him say that if Mrs. Eland nursed Miss Pepperill so well that
+she could come back to teach school, when he got to be a pirate he would
+sail 'way off with Mrs. Eland somewhere and make her walk the plank!"
+
+"If he does such a thing," cried Dot, excitedly, "he _can_ take back his
+old goat! You know, I don't believe Mrs. Eland could walk a plank,
+anyway. She isn't an acrobat, like Neale."
+
+"If Sammy Pinkney tries to be a pirate, and carries my Mrs. Eland off in
+any such horrid way," declared Tess with much energy for her, "I hope
+his mother spanks him good!"
+
+And with the hilarious laughter that welcomed this speech from
+Swiftwing, the hummingbird, let us bid farewell to our four Corner House
+girls.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+CHARMING STORIES FOR GIRLS
+
+From eight to twelve years old
+
+THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS SERIES
+
+BY GRACE BROOKS HILL.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Four girls from eight to fourteen years of age receive word that a rich
+bachelor uncle has died, leaving them the old Corner House he occupied.
+They move into it and then the fun begins. What they find and do will
+provoke many a hearty laugh. Later, they enter school and make many
+friends. One of these invites the girls to spend a few weeks at a
+bungalow owned by her parents and the adventures they meet with make
+very interesting reading. Clean, wholesome stories of humor and
+adventure, sure to appeal to all young girls.
+
+    1 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS.
+    2 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL.
+    3 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS UNDER CANVAS.
+    4 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY.
+    5 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS' ODD FIND.
+    6 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS ON A TOUR.
+    7 THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS GROWING UP.
+
+(Other volumes in preparation)
+
+_Cloth, Large 12mo., Illustrated, Per vol. 75 cents_
+
+For sale at all bookstores or sent (postage paid) on receipt of price by
+the publishers.
+
+    BARSE & HOPKINS
+    Publishers      28 West 23rd Street       New York
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Page  10 Hyphen removed from "bespectacled" in
+             rather sharp-featured, bespectacled lady
+
+    Page  40 "Bump's" changed to "Bumps'" in
+             attract Billy Bumps' palate
+
+    Page  44 "Eve" changed to "Eva" in
+             Eva Larry doesn't always get things
+
+    Page 116 Double closing quotation mark removed from
+             To steal a' 'tater!'
+
+    Page 129 The word "barries" retained in
+             barries at that last end of the patch
+
+    Page 148 Removed "in" from
+             Also the training of those who
+
+    Page 193 The word "bady" changed to "badly" in
+             the word so badly as that will never get
+
+    Page 236 The word "strongs" changed to "strong" in
+             tossed up to their stations by the strong arms of
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Corner House Girls in a Play, by
+Grace Brooks Hill and R. Emmett Owen
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY ***
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