The Corner House Girls on a Tour / Where they went, what they saw, and what they found

CHAPTER VIII—REFORMING A “PIRATE”

“Wait!” put in Ruth, firmly. “We are getting nowhere. Of course you did not tell him he could come, Aggie; but he must have thought you said something like that. What did she say, Sammy Pinkney?”

“She said—she said,” choked the now much-abused-sounding Sammy. “She said she’d like to see me find room aboard the car—and I did!” and he concluded with something like triumph.

“Oh!” gasped Agnes.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Heard, and it must be confessed she was immensely amused. “What a boy!”

“Did you ever hear the like of that?” repeated Ruth, using one of Mrs. MacCall’s favorite expressions of amazement.

“I’m sure I didn’t mean——” began Agnes, but her older sister said, quickly:

“Of course you didn’t, deary! And that boy should have known better.”

“She did tell me so—she did!” wailed Sammy. “And I’m going. My mother said I could—and that you girls was awful nice to take me.”

“Cricky!” murmured Neale, all of a broad grin now. “You got a reputation that time, Aggie, for goodness, without meaning it.”

“I don’t care——”

“The thing is now,” interrupted Ruth, decidedly, “how to send him home.”

At that Sammy lifted up his voice in a wail that might have touched a heart of stone. And really, after all, there was not a heart of stone in the whole party of tourists from the old Corner House—not even in Tom Jonah’s breast. The old dog went up to Sammy and tried to lap his tears away.

“Oh, see here, kid! don’t yell like that,” begged Neale. “Turn off the sprinkler. That won’t get you anywhere.”

“Will you tell me what we are to do with him, then?” demanded Ruth, quite put out. “There is no room for him in the car.”

“I can stay where I was. I don’t mind,” gulped Sammy.

“Never!” declared Agnes. “You made a show out of us all the way through town. We’ll never hear the last of it.”

“We were boarded by a pirate, sure enough,” chuckled Neale.

“He’s worse than any pirate,” sighed Ruth. “We’d know what to do with a real pirate.”

“I wonder?” murmured Neale, his eyes twinkling.

But Ruth ignored him. She thought she saw her duty, and was determined to do it. “I suppose we shall have to go back,” she hesitated.

“Oh, no, Ruthie!” begged the two little girls in chorus.

“I wouldn’t go back for that horrid little scamp!” snapped Agnes, her face flushing. “Sammy Pinkney, you are the worst boy!”

Sammy sniffed and looked at her. “I found that ring you lost that time, Aggie Kenway. ’Member?” he asked.

“But you are an awful nuisance,” pronounced Ruth, with conviction.

“You never would have knowed your hens was layin’ in Mr. Benjamin’s lot last week if I hadn’t ha’ told you, Ruthie Kenway—so there,” responded the youngster.

“And you told me that—that sick man was carrying a brick in his hat—and he wasn’t,” Dot put in faintly.

Sammy grinned at that; but he was prompt to say, too: “Well, who found all your dolls out on the grass where you’d played lawn party, and brought ’em in just before the thunder shower the other day? Heh?”

“Cricky!” exclaimed Neale, under his breath, and with some admiration, “the kid’s making out a case.”

Tess, the kind-hearted, would make no accusation; but Ruth, despite the boy’s rejoinders, remained firm.

“No,” she said. “He must go home. Is there a railroad station near from which we can send him, Neale? We’ll telephone to his mother. We are a long way from town.”

At that Sammy Pinkney, who prided himself on being “tough” and who was in training for a piratical future, broke down completely.

“Ow! ow! ow!” he howled, digging his grimy fist first into one eye and then into the other. “I don’t wanter! I don’t wanter! I don’t wanter go back. I ain’t got nobody to play with. And ma’ll lick me ’cause I said you’d ‘vited me to go—an’ now Aggie s-s-says she didn’t. And I been sick, anyway, and I can’t play with the fellers, ’cause it tires me so.

“I—I—I never git to go nowheres,” pursued Sammy, using the most atrocious English, but utterly abandoned in his grief. “You Corner House girls git all the go—go—good times, and I ain’t got even a s-s-sister to play with——”

At this point a most astonishing thing overtook Agnes Kenway. She had begun by glaring at Sammy in anger; but as he went on to bewail his hard state, her pretty face flushed, then paled; her blue eyes filled with tears which soon began to spill over. She drew nearer to the miserable little chap, standing, dirty and forlorn, in the middle of the road.

“Now, stop that, Sammy!” she suddenly blurted out. “Just stop. Don’t cry any more.”

“He can’t go. There isn’t room,” Ruth was repeating.

Agnes turned toward the eldest Corner House girl sharply and stamped her foot.

“He shall go, Ruth Kenway—so there! He can squeeze in on the seat between Neale and me. Here! take that bag up, Neale O’Neil. There’s room for it right in here,” and she pointed. “Now! stop your crying, Sammy. You shall go; but you’ll have to be good.”

“Oh, Aggie,” cried the happy youngster, “I’ll be as good as gold. You’ll see.”

“Well!” gasped Ruth, yet not sorry that for once Agnes had usurped authority.

Mrs. Heard laughed. Dot said:

“Well, it’s true. He hasn’t any sister.”

“And I’m sure he can be good,” put in Tess, the optimist.

Neale was chuckling to himself as he put Sammy’s suitcase in the place indicated.

“What is the matter with you, Neale O’Neil?” demanded Agnes, hotly, brushing the tears out of her eyes.

“I was just thinking that this party has assumed a good deal of a contract,” said the light-haired boy.

“What for?”

“For reforming a pirate,” said Neale.

CHAPTER IX—A WAYSIDE BIVOUAC

The first day’s journey had been carefully laid out, and the party of tourists from the old Corner House knew just where they were to stay that night. They were not to be bound throughout their tour, however, by hard-and-fast plans or rules.

“It’s a poor rule that can’t be broken,” said the matter-of-fact Mrs. Heard. “Just the same we want to know something about where we are going—sometimes. I wouldn’t fancy being caught out in some wilderness on a stormy night, for instance, with nothing better than somebody’s barn to take refuge in.”

This, of course, neither she nor the others realized at the time was a prophetic statement.

Naturally, if one is to go on such an excursion as this of the Corner House girls, one must have some idea of the roads, of hotels, and of the choice of routes and hostelries, as well as distances between proposed stops.

As far as they had been able to learn there was no hotel on the road they had selected, near which they would be at noon of this first day. So, in with the suitcases and other impedimenta, was packed a lunch hamper.

When they stopped by a wayside spring for the noon bivouac, they were out of sight of every house and a long way from home. But Neale O’Neil knew this road.

“I was over it the other day with Mr. Howbridge. Pogue Lake is just back there a couple of miles. That’s a great fishing place.”

“I never did see how men and boys could be cruel enough to fish,” said Mrs. Heard, with a little shudder. “Always wanting to kill something. Hooking fish by their poor, tender mouths—it’s awful!”

“I should think it would hurt the worms worse than it would the fish, Mrs. Heard,” said the thoughtful Tess. “The long worms get cut in half—and both ends wriggle so!”

“Huh!” grunted Sammy. “Worms ain’t got no feelings. No more’n eels. And it don’t hurt an eel to skin it—so there!”

“I’d like to know how you know so much, young man,” said Mrs. Heard, tartly. “Did you ever talk to a skinned eel? Who told you it didn’t hurt ’em?”

Other automobile parties had stopped at this pleasant spot to picnic, for there were unmistakable marks of its having been thus occupied. It seems seldom to occur to picnic parties that other excursionists may wish to use the same sylvan spot which they find so lovely and leave in such disgraceful condition.

But the party from the old Corner House was careful in more ways than one.

Strapped to the side of the automobile just over the step, was a folding tripod of light lacquered steel rods. From the apex of these when they were set up, the kettle was hung, for Mrs. Heard insisted she must have her tea.

First, however, Neale O’Neil produced a small shovel and prepared a patch of sand on the grass, on which to build the fire. He was an old hand at camping out and knew very well that fire could not spread from a sandpile.

Neale had always shown himself to be quick and handy; but Mrs. Heard was immensely pleased with his despatch in getting water boiled and his part of the camping arrangements complete. Of course, the girls “set the table,” and even Sammy was made use of. He gathered the supply of dry fuel, and if Neale had not stopped him he would have piled up sufficient at the camp site for a Fourth of July bonfire.

It was after the older girls had washed the few dishes they had used and while they were resting after the lunch that the first incident of real moment on this tour of the Corner House girls occurred.

A man came tramping through the brush with a rod in his hand and a creel slung from his shoulder. He wore long wading boots and he walked through the brook into which the waters of the spring trickled, and so reached the automobile party. Tom Jonah stood up, but did not growl at him.

The man was lifting his cap and going right by when Dot Kenway uttered a squeal of surprise.

“Oh, Tess! Oh, Aggie!” she cried. “Here’s my sick man now.”

At the same moment Neale O’Neil recognized the fisherman and shouted to him:

“Hi, Mr. Maynard! What luck to-day?”

The other turned a single glance at Neale and nodded, his attention immediately becoming fixed on Dot. He approached her with a smile warming his countenance, which seemed rather saturnine in repose.

“This is my kind little friend,” he said; and although his face was deeply flushed it was not from the same cause as when the smallest Corner House girl had previously met him. “So you remember me?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Dot replied, a little bashfully, giving him her hand.

“And how is the dolly’s health? But this isn’t the one?” asked Mr. Maynard, showing that he had a good memory for some incidents of that former unfortunate afternoon.

“Oh, yes; this is my Alice-doll,” said Dot, eagerly.

“Why, she doesn’t look the same,” the man declared, warmly interested.

“She has new clothes on—and a new hat.”

“I never would have known her again,” went on Mr. Maynard.

“And you couldn’t ever guess what’s happened to her,” said Dot, seriously.

“Her face——?”

“She’s been completely cured of a dreadful bad complexion,” confided Dot. “Neale took her to a hospital. It is wonderful what they can do to you nowadays at hospitals,” said the little girl.

“It is indeed,” agreed Mr. Maynard, taking the Alice-doll tenderly in his arms.

“I saw the place myself,” went on Dot, eagerly. “There was a big gold sign over the door, ‘Dolls’ Hospital.’ Why! I didn’t know there were such places.”

“Indeed?” responded the man, very much interested.

“Yes. And they fixed Alice’s face—and her hair. Of course, she wasn’t a real blonde before; but it’s fashionable. Like our Aggie, you know,” pursued the talkative Dot.

Meanwhile Agnes had been whispering eagerly to Neale and now they both approached Dot and her friend.

“Mr. Maynard,” said Neale, “have you see anything of Saleratus Joe again?”

“My goodness, Neale!” exclaimed the fisherman. “You could have seen both him and Jim Brady on this road this very morning. They passed me as I came along to the pond, in that big car of Brady’s.”

Mrs. Heard had been attracted by this topic of conversation. She said:

“I believe that horrid Brady brought about the stealing of my nephew’s car. And he’s shielding the men who actually did it.”

“I don’t know about that, Mrs. Heard,” said Mr. Maynard, who evidently knew the widow. “He surely didn’t have the car stolen for his own use,” and he smiled, “for that French machine of his cost him forty-five hundred dollars. He told me so the other day.”

“Are you very well acquainted with Brady, Mr. Maynard?” queried the woman, rather suspiciously.

“Why—no!” he replied, slowly. “I know most of the men who hang about the court house; and Jim thinks he can get me back in the surveyor’s office. Of course, I should be grateful if he could.”

“I don’t for a moment suppose that Brady wanted my nephew’s car,” said Mrs. Heard, sharply. “You know that?”

“Why—yes,” responded the fisherman again.

“But if Brady had it stolen, why hasn’t the car been found?” Neale put in, wonderingly.

“I told you before,” said Mrs. Heard, promptly. “They expected to find those road maps. And I guess they didn’t find ’em,” she added, with a nod of satisfaction.

“You may be right, Mrs. Heard,” agreed Mr. Maynard, but evidently desirous of saying no more.

He handed the Alice-doll back to Dot, who, with Tess, had not been much interested in this discussion, of course; and he picked up his fishing rod to depart.

“I am sorry I did not happen along before you ate your luncheon,” he said, smiling. “I could have supplied you with a nice mess of yellow perch.”

“Thank you, Mr. Maynard,” said Agnes, with a naughty twinkle in her eye. “I’m afraid we should have had to refuse them, for Mrs. Heard does not approve of fishing.”

“Goodness! but I am fond of fish, just the same,” said their chaperone, honestly.

“What would you suggest as the least cruel way of capturing fish?” Mr. Maynard asked, soberly.

“How about seining them and then chloroforming each fish?” whispered Neale to Agnes.

But the widow laughed, saying to the fisherman:

“I remember my husband used to go fishing with you, Mr. Maynard. But he never brought fish into the house where I could see them till they were ready for the pan, so as not to shock me.”

“That was quite right of him, Mrs. Heard,” said Mr. Maynard, gravely. Then he turned to Dot again. “I hope you will all have a fine time on your tour—you, especially, my dear. Do—do you suppose you could spare a kiss for me—a good-bye kiss?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” said the generous Dot. “And I truly hope you won’t be sick again, Mr. Maynard.”

The man flushed deeply, saying:

“I have not been troubled by that sickness, my dear, since the day you were so kind to me; and—please God!—I never shall be again.”

He strode away then with a nod only to the others.

CHAPTER X—THE PASSING AUTOMOBILE

“Joe and Brady?” gasped Neale, in wonder.

“Yes.”

Neale eyed her quizzically for a long half minute—that is, with one eye. The other he kept faithfully on the road ahead.

“Aggie,” he said, “you beat the world. Mucilage isn’t in it with you for sticking to a thing when your mind is once set upon it.”

“Well, I don’t care!” she pouted.

“Oh, yes you do. You evidently do care or you wouldn’t be talking about that stolen car all the time. What’s the odds where Mr. Brady and his chauffeur have gone? You don’t suppose Brady knows anything about Mr. Collinger’s machine himself, do you?”

“Of course he does! I believe he had it stolen,” cried the girl.

“And if he did, so much the more reason for his not knowing anything about what was done with the car. That’s what Mr. Maynard intimated. Brady would have no use for it. And I doubt if anybody could use it long without being arrested. Hard to hide an automobile nowadays. Unless the thieves took it away up into Canada and sold it, maybe.”

“Surely that Saleratus Joe couldn’t have done that,” rejoined Agnes, instantly, “for he couldn’t have gone there and got back so quickly.”

“Good girl. Female detective, I tell you!” chortled Neale. “But how about the other fellow?”

“Who—that awful Brady?”

“Cricky! No. They say there were two fellows in Mr. Collinger’s car when it was driven away from the court house. And maybe he—the second chap—has the car now.”

“Oh, dear me! I’d like to know,” sighed Agnes.

This first day’s journey was rather long; the smaller girls were tired by mid-afternoon. So was Sammy Pinkney, although he would not admit the fact. Tess and Dot went frankly to sleep in the tonneau; Sammy kept himself awake by asking questions of Agnes and Neale, so that they could no longer discuss the stealing of Mr. Collinger’s automobile, or any other subject of moment.

“If I ever go auto riding again with a kid of his size,” growled Neale, at last, “I’ll insist on having his question-asker extracted first.”

“Huh! What’s a ‘question-asker,’ Neale? Have I got one?” was the query that capped that climax.

The effort to reach a certain old-fashioned hotel on the road to Parmenter Lake, of which Mrs. Heard knew, was successful. Without even a minor mishap Neale brought the car to the Bristow House an hour before sunset and in plenty of time for supper.

As none of the four Corner House girls had ever slept in a hotel before, this was a new experience for them. Mrs. Heard engaged two double rooms for herself and the girls, and a third for Neale and Sammy. Tom Jonah was made comfortable in the stable yard.

The big dining-room was well filled when after they had washed, they went down to supper. The Bristow was popular despite the homely manner in which it was managed.

“Good home cooking,” Mrs. Heard said, “and simple ways. These girls who wait on us are all from the neighboring families hereabout. It is not a popular resort with the sporty class of automobilists—although I notice that occasionally one of that kind gets in here.”

Her remark was to the point, for at that very moment an example to prove the truth of it was furnished by a big man sitting alone at a small table at the end of the dining room.

“What?” he suddenly bellowed. “I can’t get a drink here?”

“Tea, coffee, milk, or soft drinks,” the waitress at that table recited, calmly. “The Bristow House is temperance.”

The big man got up heavily, his face red, and refused to eat. “That settles it!” he growled. “I’d like to know what you keep a hotel for?”

“To feed people,” said the waitress, wearily. She had evidently experienced a like incident before.

“That’s Jim Brady!” whispered Agnes, in excitement, to Neale O’Neil.

Neale sat near a window. When the politician from Milton had stamped out, Neale peered around the window blind. The big French car was standing before the hotel.

“But say! that isn’t the freckled-faced fellow with him,” Agnes declared, peering around the other side of the window frame.

“No. New chauffeur. There they go—aiming for home. Guess he’s left Saleratus Joe somewhere.”

“I’d just like to know where,” sighed Agnes, returning reluctantly to her supper.

By the time supper was over Sammy was again nodding like one of those mechanical figures shop-keepers sometimes put in their show windows to attract attention. Neale had almost to carry him up to the bedroom, and did have to help him undress after he was there.

“Cricky!” ejaculated the flaxen-haired youth, “I didn’t start out on this tour with the expectation of nursing along a child, as well as an automobile. I’m going to have a lot of fun myself if I’ve got to play nursemaid for this kid.”

Neale was really good-natured, however, and, for all his scolding, he helped Sammy off with his clothing gently enough. As Ruth had threatened, there was a bath made ready for Sammy, and that rite had to be administered before the sleepy little boy could creep between the sheets.

While Sammy was splashing in the bath a shout of laughter from Neale brought Mrs. Heard and the two older girls to the door of the boys’ bedroom.

“What is the matter, Neale O’Neil?” demanded Ruth.

Neale was sitting cross-legged on the floor, rocking himself to and fro, and weak from laughter. “Look what the kid’s brought with him in his bag!” gasped the older boy. “I was looking for his night clothes—and something clean for him to put on in the morning. See the mess of stuff I found, will you?”

It was a self-evident fact that Mrs. Pinkney, Sammy’s mother, did not pack her little son’s suitcase.

Neale had hauled out first of all a tangle of fishing tackle; a baking-powder box, well filled with a supply of squirmy fish-worms, kept moist in black soil that had sifted all over the contents of the bag through the holes in the cover of the box punched to give the worms air. There was Sammy’s air-rifle in two sections and a plentiful supply of ammunition; a banana reduced to pulp; a bottle of matches; a sling-shot; a much-rusted bread-knife with its edge patiently ground upon a whetstone—evidently Sammy’s idea of a hunting-knife or a bowie-knife.

In addition there was a very grubby-looking pocket-handkerchief in which were tightly tied two slimy garden snails; there was a piece of candy in a soiled paper, with a buffalo nickel imbedded in the confection; two brass wheels out of the works of a clock; last Sunday’s lesson paper; two horse-chestnuts; and a pint flask with very suggestive looking contents.

“What?” gasped Mrs. Heard. “That boy carrying liquor?”

“And snails!” ejaculated Agnes.

“Such a mess!” exclaimed Ruth.

“But snails or the worms or anything else there,” said the widow, severely, “will not steal away men’s brains and make them ill. Where did that boy get whisky—or is it brandy?” she added.

Neale had finally extracted the cork. He first smelled and then tasted the suggestive looking liquor. Mrs. Heard gasped in horror. Agnes squealed. Ruth demanded:

“What is it?”

“It’s what I thought!” said Neale. “Licorice water. Wonder the flask didn’t break and drench everything with the stuff. And he has brought a few clothes.”

“I see very plainly,” Mrs. Heard said, when the laughter had subsided, “that the first town we come to of any size, we shall have to buy Sammy some needfuls. Goodness! how ashamed his mother will be when she learns of this.”

Sammy was too sleepy to be questioned at that time about the wonderful contents of the suitcase; but in the morning he confessed that after his mother had packed the bag for him, he had been obliged to take out “a lot of useless duds” to make room for the necessary miscellany listed above which, to his boyish mind, was far more important.

However, it afforded the party a hearty laugh and Mrs. Heard (who declared her nephew—the now dignified county surveyor—had been just like Sammy) cheerfully purchased a proper outfit for the lad.

“I knew Sammy would be an awful nuisance,” Ruth said.

“But, goodness! isn’t he funny?” giggled Agnes.

The party made a good start from the Bristow House about nine o’clock. They were to run that day to Parmenter Lake, where they might spend some time, and to one of the hotels at that resort the trunks had been sent. They expected to have their lunch again in the open, and the hamper had been filled at the Bristow House.

Ever since the day the Corner House girls had first met Mrs. Heard and her brown pony, Jonas, there had been a matter puzzling Tess and Dot; and as time passed and the curiosity of their two active young minds was not satisfied, the children had grown more and more insistent in their demands on Neale O’Neil.

They wished to know what it was Neale had whispered into the fat brown pony’s ears when the ex-circus lad had cured the stubborn creature’s balkiness—for the time being, at least.

“I’ve always thought, Neale O’Neil, that you were better than most boys,” Tess Kenway said, seriously, the subject having come up again on this morning’s run.

“And he never was so stingy before,” wailed Dot.

“If he’d only tell me what he said to Jonas,” Tess went on, “we could say it to Billy Bumps when he balks. And you know he does balk sometimes—most awfully.”

“Oh, Tess! maybe the same words that started the pony wouldn’t start a goat. Would they, Neale?” asked the smallest Corner House girl.

But Neale only grinned, and refused to be drawn like a badger. The little girls could not get him to talk at all about the mystery.

And right here, while they were miles from any village—even while they were completely out of sight of any dwelling—a most astonishing thing happened.

Without previous warning the engine began to cough, and the car ran more slowly.

“Now what’s happened, Neale?” inquired Mrs. Heard, rather nervously.

Neale made no reply at all for a minute. He tried first one lever and then another, ran slow, tried to speed up, and then found that in spite of everything he did, the engine was going dead.

He managed to get the automobile to the side of the road out of the way of other traffic before the engine entirely ceased to turn.

“Although there doesn’t seem to be much traffic of any sort over this road,” said Ruth. “We haven’t been passed by an auto this morning.”

“I should say not!” exclaimed Agnes, promptly. “Our car is no flivver, I’d have you know. Do you expect, Ruth Kenway, to have all the cars in Christendom pass us?”

“It looks now as though some of them might,” responded the older girl, laughing at her sister’s vehemence.

“I guess you’ve heard the story of the wealthy man who went out driving in his high-powered French car,” remarked Neale, who had tipped back the hood and was looking to see if he could find what was wrong, “and his chauffeur drove too slowly to suit him.

“‘This is like a funeral procession,’ said the owner to the chauffeur; ‘why don’t you drive around that flivver in front of us?’

“‘No use, boss,’ the chauffeur told him.

“‘Why not?’ demanded the owner.

“‘There’ll be another flivver ahead of that.’”

“That’s all right, Neale O’Neil,” put in Agnes, smartly. “Trying to take our attention off the fact that we’re not moving ahead very fast, either! What’s the matter with it?”

“I—don’t—know,” confessed the boy.

He tried the starter and got a few feeble turns out of the engine.

“Nothing doing,” he grunted.

“Is it something about the wiring?” murmured Agnes.

“Can it be the carburetor?” asked Ruth.

“Maybe something is out of gear underneath the car,” suggested Mrs. Heard, briskly. “Don’t they always have to get under the car to repair it?”

“Oh, yes!” groaned Neale. “‘Get out and get under.’ That’s the auto-driver’s motto.” He pulled off his coat preparatory to doing exactly what Mrs. Heard had suggested.

Tess observed gravely:

“Well! this isn’t something Neale can whisper to and make go when it balks.”

To punctuate the laugh that followed this perfectly serious statement on the part of Tess, Agnes cried:

“Oh, listen! here comes another car.”

The rumble of an approaching automobile was then heard by all, and it was coming over the same road they had come. Before it appeared around the nearest turn, they heard the warning “Honk! Honk!” of its horn.

There whisked into sight the next moment the rapidly-gliding automobile. Agnes was standing up to look back. Almost instantly she uttered another cry—this time almost a shriek:

“Oh, Neale!”

“Cricky!” was the boy’s gasped rejoinder.

For as the strange car flashed by they had both recognized the man at the steering wheel as Joe Dawson; and the appearance of the fellow beside him was not a whit more confidence-breeding than was Joe’s.

CHAPTER XI—AN ADVENTURE BEGINS

Neale straightened up, looked at the little chap who stood with his hands in his pockets and his legs very wide apart, and finally exclaimed:

“I don’t know whether to be sore on you, Sammy, or not!”

“Huh? What’s the matter?” asked Sammy, belligerently.

Neale O’Neil started for the tank. “Why didn’t you suggest that before?” he demanded. “There! I declare, folks,” he added, “the tank’s almost dry. I should have bought gasoline before we left the hotel this morning.”

“Goodness, gracious, me!” cried Agnes. “It can’t be so, Neale!”

“It’s empty,” the boy assured her.

“And we stuck on this lonely road!” gasped Mrs. Heard. “No telling when another auto will come by.”

“Oh, dear, Neale!” murmured Ruth, “how could you be so careless?”

“It’s the easiest thing in the world to forget,” the boy replied, with a quick grin.

“It was real smart of Sammy to remember about the gosoling, I think,” said Dot.

“‘Gasoline’—little goose,” observed Tess, correcting her smaller sister, as she often did.

Agnes laughed outright. “Well, gosling is a little goose, sure enough, Dot.” Then she added: “Now, Neale! what are you going to do?”

Neale O’Neil had opened the road guide and thumbed several of its pages.

“Last place we passed where gasoline is for sale, as I figure it, is twenty miles away.”

“Oh!” was the chorused groan.

“But here!” added the boy, with sudden enthusiasm, “Procketts is but five miles ahead.”

“What is Procketts?” demanded Agnes.

“Who is Procketts?” added Ruth.

“A village. Gasoline is sold there,” declared Neale O’Neil, confidently.

“But five miles!” cried Mrs. Heard. “Will you have to walk there and bring back the gasoline yourself? That is too bad!”

Neale smiled more broadly and returned the book to his pocket.

“We’ll run along to Procketts and get our fill of gas. It won’t take long,” he said.

“But, Neale!” Ruth began.

“How can we?” cried Agnes.

“Did you say the tank was empty, young man?” demanded Mrs. Heard.

“Not a drop in it,” agreed the boy, answering the chaperone’s question. “But—you see——” and he bent over and manipulated a small cock, “here’s the emergency tank. That’s always filled, you know; and it will run us to Procketts, all right.”

“Well, you awful boy!” cried Agnes, half angrily. “You let us think we were stuck here.”

“Cricky!” ejaculated Neale O’Neil. “Didn’t you all just jump on me for being careless and thoughtless? And none of you thought of the emergency tank. A fellow’s got to protect himself when he’s alone with a parcel of females,” and he chuckled.

“You ain’t alone, Neale. I’m with you,” declared Sammy Pinkney, suddenly.

The girls shouted with laughter; but Neale said, preserving his gravity:

“Thanks, old chap. I guess we menfolk will have to pull together in self-defence.”

They came to the next village in the course of time, and Neale bought gasoline. Before one o’clock they reached a delightfully wooded place for camping, and proceeded to have lunch as they had made it the previous day. They all declared these rustic meals to be the best of all.

Just beyond the little grove was a pasture, and, looking between the bars of the old stake and rider fence, Tess and Dot saw that the open space was studded with flowers of several kinds.

“Let’s pick some for Ruthie,” Tess suggested.

“Let’s. And for Mrs. Heard,” agreed Dot.

She ran back for the Alice-doll—for of course that precious child had to pick flowers, too—and to tell the older girls what they purposed doing.

Mrs. Heard was taking a nap in the car, which stood in the shade by the roadside; the older girls were clearing up after the lunch. Neale and Sammy had gone in the opposite direction, across the road, where there was a pond and the promise of a bath, and Tom Jonah had gone with them.

So nobody gave the little girls much attention when they crept through the fence and out of sight of the camping place.

Tess and Dot did not intend to go far. There were plenty of flowers in sight of the place where they entered the pasture.

But you know how it is. The patches of blossoms at a distance appeared much more inviting than those close to the fence. The little girls ran from one to another patch, calling each other, delighted to find such a wealth of lovely, brilliant blossoms.

“I never did see such a lot of flowers in all my life, Dot Kenway!” cried Tess.

“Maybe this is the place where all the flowers started from,” suggested the philosophical younger sister.

“Where all the flowers started from?” repeated Tess. “What do you mean, Dot Kenway?”

“Why, didn’t the flowers have to start somewhere—like everything else? Our teacher says everything has had a beginning—like the first horses, and the first cow, and—and Adam and Eve, I s’pose.”

“Humph!” said the less orthodox Tess, “who told you there had to be a first flower, anyway? Nonsense!”

“How did they come, then, if they didn’t spread—oh! all around—from some place like this?” demanded Dot, quite excited.

“Oh, they just came,” declared Tess. “I suppose,” she added, reverently, “that God just thought flowers, and at once there were flowers—everywhere.”

Dot stood up, picking up the Alice-doll, and holding all the blossoms she could carry in her other hand.

“Well,” she said, softly, looking out across the field so spangled with the gay flowers, “He must have thought hard about ’em when He made this place, Tessie, for there’s so many.”

The next moment the smallest Corner House girl forgot all her unfledged philosophy, for she suddenly shrieked:

“Oh, Tess! Oh, Tess! Look at that awful, terrible bull!”

Tess was so startled by her sister’s cry that she jumped up, scattering the blossoms she had herself gathered.

“Where? What bull?” she demanded, staring all around save in the right direction.

“There!” moaned Dot, who was dreadfully afraid of all bovine creatures, crushing both her flowers and her Alice-doll to her bosom.

Tess finally saw what Dot had beheld. A great head, with wide, dangerous looking horns, had appeared above a clump of bushes not far away. The animal was calmly chewing its cud; but the very sidewise motion of its jaws seemed threatening to the two smallest Corner House girls.

“Oh, Tess!” moaned Dot, again. “Will it eat us?”

“Bulls—bulls don’t eat folks,” stammered Tess. “They—they hook ’em. And how do you know it is a bull, Dot Kenway?”

“Hasn’t it got horns?” gasped the smallest Corner House girl. “Of course it is a bull. Come, Tess Kenway! I’m going to run.”

There seemed nothing else to do. Cow, or bull, it mattered not which—both were comparatively strange animals to the sisters. Most of the cattle they had seen were dehorned.

They now scampered away as fast as they could from the vicinity of the threatening peril. To add wings to their flight the creature lowed after them mournfully.

“Oh! I just know he wants to eat us,” gasped Dot.

“Hook us, you mean,” corrected Tess, strictly a purist even in her terror.

They scrambled on, panting. Tess tried to take Dot’s hand; but the smaller girl would drop neither the doll nor the flowers. Finally they reached the fence at the edge of the woods, and plunged through it. Thus defended from the enemy (which had not followed them a step) the little girls fell to the ground, breathless, but relieved.

“That nawful, nawful bull!” groaned Dot. “I did think he’d get us before we reached the fence. See Alice! She’s just as scared as she can be.” And as the blue-eyed doll was a widely staring creature, Dot’s statement seemed particularly apt.

“I lost all my flowers,” mourned Tess.

“Well, there’s a lot more yonder,” said Dot, pointing ahead. “Mine aren’t so good. I squashed ’em, running so.”

“Well,” Tess suggested, recovering somewhat from her fright, “let’s pick some more. That old cow——”

“Bull!” interjected Dot, with confidence.

“Well, bull, then. He needn’t think he’s going to scare us so we can’t carry a bouquet to Ruthie and Mrs. Heard.”

“No-o,” agreed Dot, rather doubtfully. “But I don’t want to go back through that fence again, and into that field.”

“We don’t have to,” declared Tess, promptly. She was standing up now and could see farther than Dot. “There’s another open place where there’re flowers—and there isn’t any fence.”

“And no bulls?” queried Dot.

“There can’t be,” Tess assured her. “They always fence up cattle. We shouldn’t have gone through that fence in the first place.”

So, having somewhat recovered from their panic, they pursued their adventure without for a moment considering that the farther they went in this direction, the greater the distance back to the place where their friends and the automobile remained.

Ruth and Agnes did not think anything about the absence of the two smaller girls until Neale, Sammy and the dog returned from their baths.

As Neale O’Neil came along from the pond and into sight of the automobile and the girls, he was laughing heartily, while Sammy’s face was very red.

“What’s the matter, Neale?” demanded Agnes, suspecting a joke.

“This kid’ll be the death of me, girls,” declared Neale, still chuckling. “I took along a piece of soap with the towels and told Sammy to see if he couldn’t get some of the dust and grime off his face and hands. Cricky! I never knew a kid could get so much dirt on him between breakfast and noontime.”

“Well, he looks clean now,” said Ruth, kindly, seeing that Sammy was not very happy because of Neale’s fun.

“I guess he is,” Neale chuckled. “I said to him, ‘Sammy, did you scrub your hands good?’ And he said, ‘Sure!’ ‘And wash your face?’ ‘Yep,’ he answered. And then I remembered the part of his anatomy that a kid usually forgets is hitched to him. ‘How about your ears?’ I asked him. And what do you s’pose he said?”

“I couldn’t even guess,” giggled Agnes. “What?”

“Why, Sammy said: ‘I washed the one that’s next to Aggie when I’m sitting in the car. You needn’t tell her ‘bout the other one,’” and Neale O’Neil burst into laughter again—as did all the others, save Sammy himself.

It was Sammy trying to turn the current of conversation from his ears, who discovered the continued absence of the two little girls.

“Where’s Tess and Dot?” he inquired.

“Picking flowers,” said Agnes, promptly.

“But, goodness!” added Ruth, “they have been picking them a long time. Ever since you boys went for your swim. They must have gathered a bushel.”

“Go call ’em, Sammy,” said Mrs. Heard. “We want to start now, I suppose. It’s a long way to Parmenter Lake yet, isn’t it?”

Neale pulled out the much-thumbed guide.

“Let’s see,” he said, fluttering the pages. “There’s where we are—sixteen—no, seventeen miles beyond Procketts—where we bought the gasoline. That pond we just went to—Oh! that’s Silver Lake. I bet it used to be called ‘the mud-hole’ before the day of automobile road guides.

“Just beyond, along this road, is what the guide-book calls ‘a mountain tarn.’ What’s that, do you suppose?”

“A swamp,” declared Ruth, promptly and wrongly.

“It’s right near a village called Frog Hollow. Oh! ‘Recently renamed Arbutusville.’ What do you know about that?” chuckled Neale, delighted. “And a piece beyond there’s a precipice, ‘from the verge of which can be seen the ever-changing view of the entire eastern end of the Oxbow.’ Cricky! I bet the view isn’t half as changing as the names of these rural frog-ponds and the like. And I bet the precipice is a stone quarry,” he added, with conviction.

“I expect that ‘wayside inn’ they speak of,” said Agnes, who was looking over his shoulder, “is nothing but one of those squalid old beer-shops we see along the road.”

“Humph!” commented Mrs. Heard, with a sniff, “it must take more imagination to get up one of those road guides for automobilists than it does to find all the virtues in a Presidential candidate.”

Just then Sammy came plunging through the bushes. “Say!” he cried, “I can’t find ’em.”

“Why, Sammy!” said Agnes. “Why didn’t you call Tess and Dot?”

“Did,” he declared. “Been hollering my head off.”

“Isn’t that funny?” commented Agnes.

“I don’t know whether it is funny or not,” Mrs. Heard said, briskly. “Those children should be found.”

“Yes. We’re ready to start,” said Neale.

“Surely they would not have gone far,” Ruth added, in a worried tone.

Silence fell. The older members of the touring party looked at each other with growing apprehension.

CHAPTER XII—SEEKING

“Of course, that’s where they are,” Agnes said. “Do look at the flowers, Neale.”

“They must have gone on down the hill,” the boy agreed, and he and Agnes crept through the fence, on the trail of Tess and Dot.

They saw no trace of the children at first. And the mild-eyed cow that had caused all the trouble had disappeared. After a while Agnes cried out: “Oh, Neale! They picked flowers here. See the broken stalks!”

“Sure,” he agreed. “Let’s shout for them.”

Again and again they shouted the little girls’ names—singly and in unison.

“Where could they have gone—not to hear us?” demanded Agnes.

“Don’t suppose they are playing ’possum, do you?”

“Oh, Neale—never!”

“But there’s no place for them to go. You can see all over this pasture. Here, Tom Jonah! Find them! Find Tess and Dot!”

“We can’t see behind all the clumps of bushes,” suggested Agnes.

“But, cricky! are they asleep behind the bushes somewhere?” Neale demanded.

“No-o. Not likely,” Agnes admitted.

“But—here!” shouted Neale. “What’s this?”

He had found the place where Tess, frightened, as was Dot, by the cow, had stood up and dropped her great bunch of picked flowers. “What do you know about that?” the boy asked, quite seriously.

“Oh, Neale! Their flowers. They would never have thrown them away unless something had happened.”

“But what?”

“I can’t imagine,” said Agnes, almost in tears.

“Neither can I,” growled the boy, staring around the field. “Now, don’t turn on the sprinkler, Aggie. Chirk up. Of course, nothing really bad has happened to them.”

“Why hasn’t there?” choked Agnes.

“Well, how could there? Right here almost in sight of the road. You girls would have heard them if they had cried out——”

“Do you think they’ve been carried off—stolen—kidnapped? Oh, Neale O’Neil! do you?” almost shrieked Agnes.

“Oh, stop it, you little goose—stop it,” begged the boy. “Of course not.”

“Goose yourself——”

“No; gander,” said Neale O’Neil, determined now not to let Agnes see how serious he felt the disappearance of Tess and Dot was. “Now, Aggie, you stay here while I run around a bit and see what I can find.”

He started off, Tom Jonah going too. The hot sun had almost immediately destroyed any scent the children may have left as they passed; and although the old dog understood very well what the matter was—that his two little mistresses had disappeared—he could find the trail no better than could Neale and Agnes.

Neale ran, shouting, toward the far end of the pasture. Almost at once he and the barking dog started something.

With a puffing snort, and a great crackling of brush, up rose the peaceful cow that had so startled Tess and Dot Kenway.

“Oh, Neale! come back!” shrieked Agnes, as she saw the wondering cow looking over the bush at her.

“What’s the matter?” the boy demanded, while Tom Jonah approached the cow curiously.

“The cow!”

“Oh, she won’t hurt you,” declared Neale O’Neil.

“Just the same I’m afraid of her,” said Agnes. “See her now!”

The cow was shaking her horns at the dog, and threatening him.

“Like enough she has a calf hidden away there in the brush,” said Neale. “And——Cricky!” suddenly he added; “I bet she scared the kids.”

“Oh, Neale!”

“Sure! That’s what’s the matter. They saw her and ran. And they ran in the wrong direction, of course,” Neale continued, with very good judgment.

“Do you really think so, Neale?”

“Just as likely as not. Come here, Tom Jonah! She’ll hook you yet.”

“Oh!” said Agnes, quickly, “then we should be able to find the poor little things easily.”

“Huh? How do you make that out?” Neale demanded.

“Why, if they ran in the wrong direction, we ought to follow them.”

“That’s all right,” returned the boy. “But there are so many wrong directions! Which did they take?”

Agnes began to sob. Neale could not comfort her. Tom Jonah came and lapped her hands with his soft tongue, to show that he, too, sympathized with her.

The boy shouted until he was hoarse; but no childish cry was returned to him on the soft breeze.

And there was very good reason for that. The two smallest Corner House girls had some time since wandered beyond the sound of Neale’s voice or the dog’s bark,—even beyond the sound of the automobile horn.

While the older folk were seeking Tess and Dot, the two young explorers were seeking their friends. At first one could not have convinced the children that they were lost. No, indeed! It was Ruth and Agnes and Neale and Tom Jonah and Mrs. Heard and Sammy—and even the automobile—that had lost themselves.

“I don’t see where they could have gone to,” complained Dot, tired at last of carrying both the Alice-doll and her flowers so far.

“I didn’t s’pose we’d come so far from that road,” agreed Tess.

“Oh, I see it!” Dot cried, suddenly.

“The auto?”

“No, no! The road.”

“Oh,” said Tess, gladly. “Then we’ll find them now.”

The little girls climbed down a bank into a road which—had they known it—would have taken them out into the more important highway the motorcar was on. But unfortunately Tess and Dot turned in the wrong direction. They kept on walking away from their friends.

Had they not done this, or had they sat down and waited, Neale O’Neil and Tom Jonah would have found them in time; for they searched the patch of woods clear to this back road before returning, hopelessly, to the automobile to report their failure.

However, Tess and Dot walked and walked, until they really could walk no farther without resting. And then, having been absent from their friends for fully three hours, they had to sit down.

Dot cried a bit and Tess put her arms about her and tried to comfort the smallest Corner House girl. They had both long since thrown their flowers away, for the blossoms had wilted.

“Never mind, Dot,” Tess said, trying to be very brave, “Ruthie and Aggie and the rest can’t be far away.”

“But why did they go off and leave us behind?” wailed the little girl. “And—and—I ache!”

“Where do you ache, dear?” asked the sympathetic Tess.

“In—in that funny bone that goes up and down my back,” sobbed Dot.

“Funny-bone! Why, Dot!” cried Tess, “that isn’t in your back. Your funny-bone is in your elbow.”

“I guess I know where I hurt, Tess Kenway!” responded Dot, indignantly. “And it isn’t in my elbow. It’s that long, straight bone in my back I’m talking about. You know, Tess—your head sits on one end of it and you sit on the other. And it’s all—just—one—big—ache——So there!” and she cried again.

“Now, I tell you what, Dot Kenway,” said Tess, briskly. “There’s one thing never does any good—not when your folks is lost from you.”

“Wha—what’s that?” choked the smallest Corner House girl.

“Crying,” the older sister said, firmly.

“We—ell,” sniffed Dot.

“So let’s not do it. We can rest here as long as you want. When your backbone stops aching, we can go on.”

“But where’ll we go to?” was Dot’s very pertinent query.

“Why—why, we’ll just walk on—along the road.”

“And where does it go to?”

“Why, does that matter?” returned Tess, bravely. “Of course our automobile will come along and pick us up. Or, if it doesn’t, we’ll reach a house and the lady will invite us in.”

“Well,” whimpered Dot, “I don’t care how soon we reach that house—and the lady ‘vites us in—and gives us our supper. I’m hungry, Tess.”

“Don’t you s’pose I am, too?” asked the older girl, with some asperity. Dot did sound rather selfish. “And Alice?”

“Oh! the poor, dear child must be just starved,” sniffed Dot, hugging the doll closer.

“But she isn’t complaining all the time,” said Tess, scornfully.

Dot fought back her tears. “I think you’re horrid, cruel, cross, Tess Kenway!” she said. “But I’ll try not to cry.”

There was reason for the children’s hunger. It was now after six o’clock, the sun had disappeared behind the woods, and they had walked a long way.

Once they heard a great crashing in the bushes.

“Bears! bears!” whispered the excitable Dot.

“No-o,” Tess said, gravely. “It didn’t say anything about there being bears in this neighborhood, in that book of Neale’s. If there were bears, he’d have told us about them.”

“Well—well——whales, maybe.”

“Goodness, Dot! you are the tryingest child! Whales live in the sea.”

“Don’t they ever come out?”

“Of course not,” declared Tess, with conviction.

“Not even to rest themselves?” demanded Dot, with wonder. “I should think they would get awful tired swimming all the time. It must be more tireful than walking,” and she sighed.

“Tire-some,” corrected Tess, but without enthusiasm, and thinking of the whales. “Perhaps they come into shallow water and lie down on the bottom of the sea with their heads sticking out to breathe. Yes, that must be it.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Dot, for at least the twentieth time, and with lapsing interest in the whale. “Oh, dear! I wish Tom Jonah were with us.”

“So do I! So do I!” agreed Tess, for as dusk came on she, like the smallest Corner House girl, was becoming truly frightened.

The disturbance in the bushes was repeated, and the children tried to run. A loud bell jangled—a most annoying bell; and in the distance a voice sounded:

“So, boss! So, boss! So, boss!”

It only frightened Tess and Dot the more to hear such strange sounds. They had never before heard the cows called home. And, besides, after their recent experience, they would have been only the more disturbed had they been aware that the thrashing in the bushes was Sukey, getting ready to go up to the bars to be milked.

No house did they see, however; not even a barn. They were on a back road, very seldom traveled, and the farms, what few there were in the neighborhood, faced on other highways.

The children trudged on, hand in hand, both crying now. Tess was weeping softly; but Dot was crying aloud, not caring who heard her.

When they came to a field beside the road, Tess stared all about for a light. But there was no beckoning lamp in a farmhouse window; nor even a flickering lantern to point the way to the farm outbuildings.

The streak of violet, shading to light blue, that evening had painted along the horizon with her careless brush, disappeared. Tall, black figures of trees upreared themselves between the children and the sky, and seemed to stalk nearer, threateningly.

A great nightbird floated out of the wood and swept low across the field with a “swish, swish, swish” of powerful wings. When it rose into the trees again it said:

“Who? Who-o? Who-o-o?”

“Oh! Who is he?” gasped Dot, clinging close to her sister.