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

CHAPTER IV—SALERATUS JOE

“Don’t get out of the car, Neale,” begged Agnes, clasping her hands.

“Try to back away from it,” suggested Ruth.

The smaller girls clung to each other (Dot determinedly to the Alice-doll, as well), and, although they did not say much, they were frightened. Tess whispered:

“Oh, dear me! I’m ‘fraid enough of the wriggling fish-worms that Sammy digs in our garden. And this snake is a hundred times as big!”

“And fish-worms don’t shoot people with their tongues, do they?” suggested Dot.

Just at that very moment, when the six-foot rattler had coiled to strike again, there was a rattling and jangling of tinware from up the road. There was a turn not far ahead, and the young folks could not see beyond it.

“Goodness me!” exploded Agnes, “what’s coming now?”

“Not another rattlesnake, I bet a cent—though it’s some rattling,” chuckled Neale O’Neil.

The heads of a pair of horses then appeared around the turn. They proved to be drawing a tin-peddler’s wagon, and over this rough piece of driveway the wash-boilers, dishpans, kettles, pails, and a dozen other articles of tin and agate-ware, were making more noise than the passage of a battery of artillery.

Some scientists have pointed out that snakes—some snakes, at least—seem to be hard of hearing. That could not have been so with the big rattlesnake that had held up the Kenways and their automobile.

Before the Jewish peddler on the seat of the wagon could draw his willing horses to a halt, the snake swiftly uncoiled and wriggled across the road and into the bushes. All that was left to mark his recent presence was a wavy mark in the dust.

“Vat’s the madder?” called the peddler. “Ain’t dere room to ged by?”

“Sure,” said the relieved Neale. “Let me back a little and you pull out to the right, and we’ll be all right. We were held up by a snake.”

The Jew (he was a little man with fiery hair and whiskers, and he had a narrow-brimmed derby hat jammed down upon his head), seemed to study over this answer of the boy for fully a minute. Then, as Neale was steering the automobile slowly past his rig, he leaned sidewise and asked, with a broad smile:

“I say, mister! Vat did you say stopped you?”

“A snake,” declared Neale, grinning.

“Oy, oy! And that it iss yedt to drive one of them so benzine carts? No! Mein horses iss petter. They are not afraid of snakes.”

He still sat, without starting his team, thinking the surprising matter over, when the automobile turned the curve in the road and struck better going.

“Well!” ejaculated Agnes, “I only hope he stays there till that snake comes out of the bushes again and climbs into his cart.”

“My! how disagreeable you can be,” returned Neale, laughing. “I don’t believe you’ll get your wish, however.”

“I’m glad we didn’t run over that snake,” declared Mrs. Heard, nodding her head. “I’m opposed to killing any dumb creature.”

“Then,” suggested Dot, earnestly, “you must be like Mr. Seneca Sprague.”

“Me? Like Seneca Sprague?” gasped the lady, yet rather amused. “I like that!”

“Why, how can that be, Dot?” asked Ruth, rather puzzled herself, for Seneca Sprague was a queer character who was thought by most Milton people to be a little crazy.

“Why, he’s a vegetablearian. And Mrs. Heard must be,” announced Dot, confidently, “if she doesn’t believe in killing dumb beasts.”

“There’s logic for you!” exclaimed Neale. “Score one for Dot.”

The lady laughed heartily. “I suppose I ought to be a ‘vegetablearian’ if I’m not,” she said. “I dunno as I could worship beasts the way some of the ancients did; but I don’t believe in killing them unnecessarily.”

“I know about some of the animal gods and goddesses the Greeks and Egyptians used to worship,” ventured Tess, who had not taken much part in the conversation of late. “Did any of them worship snakes, do you s’pose?”

“I believe some peoples did,” Ruth told her.

“Oh, I know about gods and goddesses,” cried Dot, eagerly. “Our teacher read about them—or, some of them—only yesterday, in school.”

“Well, Miss Know-it-all,” said Agnes, good-naturedly, “what did you learn about them?”

“I—I remember ‘bout one named Ceres,” said the smallest Corner House girl, with corrugated brow, trying to remember what she had heard read.

“Well, what about her?” asked Agnes, encouragingly.

“What was Ceres the goddess of, honey?” pursued Ruth, as Dot still hesitated.

“Why—why she was the goddess of dressmaking,” declared the child, with sudden conviction.

“Oh, oh, oh!” ejaculated Neale, under his breath.

“For goodness sake! where did you get that idea?” demanded Ruth, while Agnes and Mrs. Heard positively could not keep from laughing, and Tess looked at her smaller sister with something like horror. “Why—Dot Kenway!” she murmured.

“She is, too!” pouted Dot. “My teacher said so. She said Ceres was the goddess of ‘ripping and sewing.’ Now, isn’t that dressmaking?”

“Oh, cricky!” gasped Neale, and swerved the car to the left in his emotion.

“Do be careful, Neale!” squealed Agnes.

“Yes. You’ll have us into something,” warned Ruth.

“Then put ear-muffs on me,” groaned the boy. “That child will be the death of me yet. ‘Sowing and reaping’—‘ripping and sewing’—wow!”

“Humph!” observed Agnes. “You needn’t be the death of us if she does say something funny. Do keep your mind on what you are about, Neale.”

But Neale O’Neil was a careful driver. He was a sober boy, anyway, and would never qualify in the joy-riding class, that was sure.

The remainder of the ride to Marchenell Grove was a jolly and enjoyable one. They all liked Mrs. Heard more and more as they became better acquainted with her. She seemed to know just how to get along with young folk, and despite her stated suffragist and S.P.C.A. proclivities, even Neale pronounced her “good fun.”

The Grove was a very popular resort, and very large. Perhaps it was just as well that Mrs. Heard was with the girls, for unexpectedly a situation developed during the day that might have been really unpleasant had not an older person—like the good and talkative lady—been with them.

There was a large party of picnickers that had come together and that made one end of the grounds very lively. There was an orchestra with them and they usurped the dancing pavilion. Not that Ruth or Agnes would have danced here; neither Mr. Howbridge nor Mrs. MacCall would have approved; nor did Mrs. Heard countenance dancing in such a public place. But after they had all been out in boats on the river, and had eaten their lunch, and enjoyed the swings, and strolled through the pleasant paths of the Grove, it was only natural that the two older Kenways should wish to see the dancing. They had no idea that the crowd about the pavilion was rowdyish.

Neale was busy with the car in preparation for their return to Milton. The little girls were watching him at work, and Mrs. Heard was resting in the car, too. So Ruth and Agnes went alone down to the pavilion.

“Dear me,” sighed Agnes. “I really wish we could have just one spin on the floor—just us two. That music makes my feet fairly itch.”

“You will have to possess your soul with patience—or else scratch your poor little feet,” laughed her sister. “To think of your wanting to dance here! I am afraid all these people—especially the boys—are not nice.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to dance with them,” pouted Agnes. “Only with you. I just love to dance to this piece the orchestra is playing.”

“Save it till next week’s school dance,” laughed Ruth. “Oh!”

Her startled ejaculation was brought out by the appearance of a strange young man at her elbow. He was really not a nice looking fellow at all, his face was unpleasantly freckled, and the corners of his lips and the ends of the first three fingers of his right hand were stained deeply by the use of cigarettes.

“Aft’noon!” said this stranger, affably. “Want a whirl? The floor’s fine—come on in.”

Agnes, who was much more timid in reality than she usually appeared, shrank from the fellow, trying to draw Ruth with her.

“Let the kid wait for us,” suggested the freckled young man, leering good-naturedly enough at Agnes, and probably not at all aware that he was distasteful to the Kenway girls. “We can have one whirl.”

“I am much obliged to you,” Ruth said, rather falteringly. “I would rather not.”

“Aw, say—just a turn. Don’t throw me down,” said the fellow, his eyes becoming suddenly hard and the smile beginning to disappear from his face.

“No, thank you. Neither my sister nor I wish to dance here,” said Ruth, growing bolder—and more indignant.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know how to dance?” growled the freckled one.

“I don’t tell you anything, but that we do not wish to dance,” and Ruth tried to turn away from him.

The fellow stepped directly in their path. They were just on the fringe of loiterers about the pavilion. Agnes clapped a hand upon her lips to keep from screaming.

“Aw, come on,” said the fellow, laying a detaining hand upon Ruth’s arm.

Then something very unexpected, but very welcome, happened. Mrs. Heard, seeing a hand’s breadth of cloud in the sky and fearing a thunder storm, had sent Neale O’Neil scurrying for the girls. He came to the spot before this affair could go any farther.

“Hullo!” he exclaimed, sharply. “What’s this?”

“This—this gentleman,” said Ruth, faintly, “offers to dance with me, but I tell him ‘no.’”

“What are you butting in for, kid?” demanded the freckled young fellow, thrusting his jaw forward in an ugly manner. But he took his hand from Ruth’s arm.

Neale said to the girls, quite quietly though his eyes flashed:

“Mrs. Heard wants you to come back to the car at once. Please hurry.”

“Say! I don’t get you,” began the rough again.

“You will in a moment,” Neale shot at him. “Go away, girls!”

Agnes did not want to go now; but Ruth saw it would be better and she fairly dragged her sister away.

“Neale will be hurt!” moaned Agnes, all the way to the car. “That awful rowdy has friends, of course.”

What really happened to Neale the girls never knew, for he would not talk about it. Trained from his very babyhood as an acrobat, the ex-circus boy would be able to give a good account of himself if it came to fisticuffs with the freckled-faced fellow. Although the latter was considerably older and taller than Neale, the way he had lived had not hardened his muscles and made him quick of eye and foot or handy with his fists.

Perhaps Neale did not fight at all. At least he came back to the car without a mark upon him and without even having had his clothes ruffled. All he said in answer to the excited questions of the girls was:

“That’s a fellow called Saleratus Joe. You can tell why—his face with all those yellow freckles looks like an old fashioned saleratus biscuit. He belongs in Milton. I’ve seen him before. He isn’t much better than a saloon lounger.”

“Goodness me!” exclaimed Mrs. Heard. “Saleratus Joe is one of the fellows who my nephew thinks stole his automobile. I must tell him that we saw the fellow. Perhaps the car can be traced after all.”

“Through Saleratus Joe?” said Neale O’Neil. “Well—maybe.”

CHAPTER V—DOT’S AWFUL ADVENTURE

“They only call him that for fun,” explained Neale O’Neil. “And whether he helped get away with the surveyor’s machine or not, I’m sure I don’t know.”

“But can’t you guess?” cried Agnes, in exasperation.

“What’s the use of guessing?” returned her boy chum. “That won’t get you anywhere. You’re a poor detective, Aggie.”

“Don’t make fun,” complained Agnes, who was very much excited about the automobile robbery. They had just got their car, and she had longed for it so deeply that she was beginning to be worried for fear something would happen to it.

“Shut Tom Jonah into the garage at night,” Neale suggested. “I warrant no thieves will take it.”

Mr. Howbridge, while he was about it, had had a cement block garage built on the rear of the Stower premises facing Willow Street, for the housing of the Corner House girls’ motor car.

“Mr. Collinger’s auto was stolen right on the street,” said Agnes, doubtfully.

“That’s the worst of these flivvers,” retorted Neale, with a grin. “People are apt to come along and pick ’em up absent-mindedly and go off with them. Say! have you heard the latest?”

“What about?” asked Agnes, dreamily.

“About the flivver. Do you know what the chickens say when one of ’em goes by?”

“No,” declared the girl.

“Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!” mimicked the boy.

Agnes giggled. Then she said: “But Mr. Collinger’s wasn’t one of those cheap cars. It was a runabout; but it cost him a lot of money.”

“But that freckled-faced young man, Neale—do you suppose he could be the one Mrs. Heard said was seen driving the stolen car away from the court house?”

“Why, how should I know?” demanded Neale. “I’m no seventh son of a seventh son.”

“I wish we had seen a constable out there in the grove and had had him arrested.”

“What for? On what charge?” cried Neale, wonderingly.

“Why, because he spoke to Ruth and me. Then he could be held while his record was looked up. Maybe Mr. Collinger could have recovered his car by that means.”

“Cricky!” ejaculated the boy. “You’ve been reading the police court reports in the newspapers, I believe, Aggie.”

“Well! that’s what they do,” declared the girl, confidently.

“Maybe so. But you couldn’t have had the fellow arrested for speaking to you. You shouldn’t have been around the dance floor if you wanted to escape that. But, perhaps that freckled rascal is one of the thieves, and maybe he can be traced. Mrs. Heard will tell her nephew and he will attend to it—no fear!”

“But it would be just great, Neale, if we could do something toward recovering the car and getting the thieves arrested,” said Agnes who, as Neale often said, if she went into a thing, went into it all over!

They had not much time just then, however, to give to the mystery of the county surveyor’s lost automobile. Final examinations were coming on and the closing of school would be the next week but one.

Even Dot was busy with school work, although she was not very far advanced in her studies; and during these last few days she was released from her classes in the afternoon earlier than the other Corner House girls.

Sometimes she walked toward Meadow Street, which was across town from the Corner House and in a poorer section of Milton, with some of her little school friends before coming home; and so she almost always met Sammy Pinkney loafing along Willow Street on returning.

Sammy did not go to school this term. Scarlet fever had left this would-be pirate so weak and pale that the physician had advised nothing but out-of-doors for him until autumn.

Sammy, in some ways, was a changed boy since his serious illness. He was much thinner and less robust looking, of course; but the changes in him were not all of a physical nature. For one thing, he was not so rough with his near-neighbors, the Corner House girls. They had been very kind to him while he was ill, and his mother was always singing their praises. Besides, the other boys being in school, Sammy was lonely and was only too glad as a usual thing to have even Dot to talk to or play with.

Dot was a little afraid of Sammy, even now, because of his past well-won reputation. And, too, his reiterated desire to be a pirate cast a glamor over his character that impressed the smallest Corner House girl.

One day she met him on Willow Street, some distance from the old Corner House. He was idly watching a man across the street who was moving along the sidewalk in a very odd way indeed.

The Kenways had lived in a very poor part of Bloomingsburg before coming to Milton, and there had been saloons in the neighborhood; but Dot had been very small, and if she had seen such a thing as an intoxicated man she had forgotten it. Near the Corner House there were no saloons, although the city of Milton licensed many of those places. Dot had not before seen a man under the influence of liquor.

This unfortunate was not a poorly dressed man. Indeed, he was rather well appareled and normally might have been a very respectable citizen. But he was staggering from side to side of the walk, his head hanging and his stiff derby hat—by some remarkable power—sticking to his head, although it threatened to fall off at every jerk.

“Why—ee!” gasped the smallest Corner House girl, “what ever is the matter with that poor man, Sammy Pinkney, do you suppose?”

Sammy, trying to wrap his limbs about a fire-plug in emulation of a boa-constrictor, jerked out:

“Brick in his hat!”

“Oh! What?” murmured the puzzled Dot, eyeing the poor man wonderingly and clasping the Alice-doll closer.

Sammy grinned. He was a tantalizing urchin and loved to mystify the innocent Dot.

“He’s carrying a brick in his hat,” he repeated, with daring.

“Why—why——Doesn’t he know it?” demanded the little girl.

“I guess nobody’s told him yet,” chuckled Sammy.

At that moment the intoxicated man just caught his hat from tumbling off by striking it with the palm of one hand and so settling it well down upon his ears again.

“Oh, my!” murmured the startled Dot. “It came pretty near falling out, didn’t it?”

“He, he!” snickered Sammy.

“Do you suppose he wants to carry that brick in his hat?” asked Dot, seriously. “I shouldn’t think he would.”

“He don’t know he’s got it,” said Sammy.

“Why doesn’t somebody tell him?” demanded Dot. “The poor man! He’ll surely fall down.”

Sammy still snickered. Somebody should have spanked Sammy, right then and there!

“I don’t care!” exclaimed Dot, more and more disturbed, “it doesn’t seem nice—not at all. I think you ought to tell him, Sammy.”

“Not me!”

“Well——” Dot looked all around. There was nobody else in sight just then. Willow Street was quite deserted.

“If you won’t, then I must,” declared the little girl, shouldering the obligation pluckily and starting across the street.

“Aw, Dot! Let him alone,” muttered Sammy.

The young rascal was suddenly startled. He began to wonder what would happen to him if his mother learned that he had been trying to fool Dot Kenway in any such way as this.

“Come back!” he called after her.

“Sha’n’t!” declared Dot, who could be stubborn when she wanted to be.

“Say! that man won’t listen to you,” insisted Sammy.

Dot kept right on. The man had halted, and was clinging to a tree box, his head hanging down. His face was very much flushed and his eyes were glassy.

“But I s’pose,” thought Dot, “if I was carrying a brick in my hat it would make me sick, too.”

“Mister!” she said to the man, stopping in the gutter and looking up at him.

“Huh? What’s matter?” asked the man. His head jerked up and he looked all around to see who had spoken to him.

“Mister,” said Dot, earnestly, “I—I hope you’ll ‘scuse me, but there’s a brick in your hat. Sammy Pinkney says so. And I think if you take it out you’ll feel ever so much better.”

Sammy heard her. He actually grew pale, and, casting a startled glance around him, he ran. He ran all the way home, for he could not imagine what the man would say or do to Dot. Sammy was not a very brave boy.

The unfortunate man looked down at Dot, finally having discovered her whereabouts, with preternatural gravity.

“Say—little girl—say that ’gain, will you?” he said, slowly.

Dot quite innocently repeated it. The man carefully removed his hat and looked into it. Then he turned it over and shook it. Nothing, of course, fell to the ground.

“’Tisn’t there. You fooled yourself. I thought so,” muttered the man.

And then he leaned so far over that he dropped the hat in the gutter.

“You must be dreadful sick,” Dot said to him, her little heart touched by his appearance.

“Yes—that’s it. Sick. That’s it,” he mumbled.

This was a really awful adventure for little Dot Kenway.

“I’m going to get you a glass of water,” she said. “Your face is so red. You are sick, I can see.”

He said nothing, but blinked at her. Perhaps he did not at first quite understand. Dot turned to cross the street toward the store on the corner. Then she turned back.

“Will you please hold my Alice-doll while I go for the water?” she asked the man. “Do be very careful with her—please.”

“Sure!” said the man, good-naturedly.

“You’ll truly, truly be very careful of her?”

“Sure will,” repeated the unfortunate.

So, after she had placed the doll carefully in his arms, the little girl tripped away on her errand of mercy. The man sat down on the curb and held it. It might have been a laughable situation—only no thinking person could have laughed.

The man nursed the doll as tenderly as Dot would have done herself. He rocked to and fro on the curb, hugging the battered doll and looking down at it earnestly.

Nobody had yet noticed the incident—save Sammy Pinkney; and Sammy Pinkney had run away.

Dot was bold in the cause of any one in need, if she was not bold for herself. She asked for the glass of cold water and obtained it. She brought it carefully back to the man on the curbstone, holding the glass in both her dimpled hands.

His face was still very red, but his eyes were no longer glassy. He looked at the child with a shamed expression slowly dawning in his countenance, and his eyes were moist with tears.

“You’d better take your doll, little girl, and get away from me,” he said, but not roughly.

“Oh, no,” said Dot, determinedly. “I must help you. I know you must be very sick. You ought to see our Dr. Forsyth. He could make you well quick, I know.”

“I guess you can cure me as quickly as a doctor,” said the man, hanging his head. “I—I had a little girl like you once.”

“Now drink some of this,” urged Dot, without noticing the man’s last remark, and offering the glass of water.

He took it in a trembling hand and raised it to his lips. The little girl reached for the Alice-doll, but watched him carefully.

“Don’t spill it,” she said, “and don’t drink it all. I think if I put some on your face you’d feel better.”

Immediately she produced a diminutive handkerchief, folded just as it had been ironed, and when she took back the glass, she dipped the bit of muslin in the water remaining in it.

Then with tender hand she wiped his hot face; and she wiped away two big tears, too, that started down his cheeks. She was still engaged in thus playing the Good Samaritan when a swiftly moving motor car coming through Willow Street was suddenly brought to a stop beside them.

There was a thin, wiry fellow at the steering wheel. The goggles he wore half disguised him. In the tonneau sat a fat, prosperous looking man smoking a big, black cigar.

“That’s him, ain’t it, Joe?” asked the fat man, nodding toward the man sitting on the curbstone.

“Yep. That’s him,” rejoined the chauffeur.

“Hey, Mr. Maynard!” exclaimed the fat man. “Get up and get in here. I want to talk to you.”

The fast sobering man looked up, saw the speaker, and did not look particularly pleased. He tried to rise. Although his brain was fast clearing, his limbs were still wabbly.

“Get out and boost him in here,” said the fat man, in a low tone to the chauffeur.

The latter hopped out. He came quickly to the aid of Mr. Maynard, and pushed little Dot Kenway rudely aside. The man still held the doll.

“Say! you don’t want that thing!” muttered the chauffeur, and he seized the doll and flung it disdainfully upon the ground.

Dot uttered a scream of terror. At that moment Agnes and Neale O’Neil, the latter carrying the girl’s schoolbooks, came around the corner.

CHAPTER VI—THE BIG TOUR IS PLANNED

“I—I’m not going to,” sobbed the smallest Corner House girl. “I don’t b’lieve they’ll be kind to that man. He’s awful sick.”

“Who is?” asked Neale quickly, exchanging glances with Agnes.

“That man they took away. I got him a drink of water. But Sammy Pinkney told a story ’bout him.”

“What did Sammy say?” asked Agnes, but her attention scarcely on what Dot was saying.

The little girl told her. “But he was sick. I know it. I got him a drink of water. He wasn’t carrying a brick at all.”

Neale had grinned faintly; but his face was quickly sober again.

“I know who that Mr. Maynard is,” he said. “He used to work in the court house. I believe he was in Mr. Collinger’s office—and he was a real nice man once.”

“Why, he is now,” cried Dot, listening with very sharp ears. “Only he is sick.”

“Perhaps you are right, Dottie,” agreed Neale, still gravely, but speaking to Agnes. “Anyhow, he lost his wife and then his little girl. He’s gone all to pieces, they say. It’s an awfully sad case. And do you know who that big man is?”

“No,” said Agnes, still unnoticing and gazing after the disappearing car.

“That’s Jim Brady. He’s a ward leader on the other side of town. He’s very powerful in politics——”

“Oh, Neale!” cried Agnes, suddenly, seizing her friend’s arm.

“Hul-lo! What’s the matter?” asked Neale.

“Do you know who that fellow was that drove the car? Did you see him?”

“No-o. I didn’t notice him much. He had dust goggles on——”

“I know! I know!” cried the excited girl. “They concealed his face a good deal. But I saw the freckles.”

“The freckles?” repeated Neale, wonderingly.

“Yes. Of course. It was that freckled fellow who spoke to Ruth that day.”

“Not Joe Dawson?” cried the boy.

“Yes. If that’s his real name. Oh, Neale! Let’s have him arrested.”

“Cricky!” ejaculated the surprised youth. “Arrest your aunt!”

Agnes burst out laughing at that—serious as she was. “Aunt Sarah Maltby certainly did not steal Mr. Collinger’s motor car,” she said.

“Well. We don’t know that Saleratus Joe did,” grinned Neale. “Come on home. Don’t cry any more, Dot. Just the same I would like to punch that fellow who threw down your doll.”

“Can’t we find out who he is—all about him?” demanded Agnes.

“Maybe. That Mr. Maynard knows him, I s’pose. I could ask him. I used to clean Mr. Maynard’s yard and sidewalks for him. I’ll see,” promised Neale O’Neil.

When the trio reached the Corner House that day, however, they found a subject afoot that put out of Neale’s and Agnes’ minds for the time being all thought of the stealing of Mr. Collinger’s car. And yet the county surveyor’s aunt had something to do with this very interesting topic under discussion.

Mrs. Heard was present, having a neighborly cup of tea with Mrs. MacCall, who was quite as much a friend of the family as she was housekeeper. Mr. Howbridge had chanced to drop in as well, and Ruth had arrived home ahead of the other Corner House girls.

“Oh, Aggie!” cried Ruth, running out of the sitting room where tea was being served, Uncle Rufus having rolled the service table in there at Mrs. MacCall’s request. “Just guess!”

“Going to have rice waffles for supper,” put in Neale, with a cheerful grin.

“That boy!” said the oldest girl, scornfully.

“What has happened?” demanded Agnes, excitedly. Ruth was seldom given to exuberance of speech or action, and she was plainly stirred up now.

“He says we can do it!”

“Huh?” grunted Neale, staring.

“Who says we can do what?” demanded Agnes, her blue eyes almost as wide as saucers. “How you talk, Ruth Kenway!”

“It will be most delightful, I am sure,” said the older girl, more composedly. “We shall all enjoy it. And Mrs. Heard has agreed to act as chaperone, for Mrs. MacCall can’t go, and you know how Aunt Sarah Maltby feels about the auto.”

“Oh! I see,” grumbled Neale. “A glimmer of intelligence reaches my brain. You are talking about the trip in the auto after school closes.”

“Is that it?” cried Agnes, clasping her hands. “Oh, Ruthie!”

“That is it, my dear! Mr. Howbridge just spoke about it himself. He has known Mrs. Heard for years, you see, and he thinks she would be just the nicest person in the world to go with us.”

“And so she is,” agreed Agnes.

“Well,” said Dot, who had listened in grave silence, “if we are going off on a long journey with our car, my Alice-doll must have her complexion ‘tended to. You take her, Neale, and get her doctored,” and she thrust the precious doll directly into the boy’s hands, and marched out of the room with quivering lip. It was really very hard for the smallest Corner House girl to part from her most loved child even in such an emergency.

“There now! What did I tell you?” demanded Agnes, of Neale. “You’ve got your hands full.”

“Of doll,” he admitted, but he did not appear rueful. “I know just where they will fix her up as good as new,” and he laughed. “I believe in preparedness. I foresaw this when I spoke about the doll the other day.”

But now was the time to talk about the tour. Agnes had prepared for this since the very first day she knew they were to have the automobile. The height of her ambition was to travel in the most modern way—by motor car.

With Neale—and sometimes aided by her sisters—she had planned elaborate routes through the surrounding country—sometimes into neighboring states. She had borrowed maps and guide books galore and had purchased not a few. In fact, in a desultory way, she and Neale had picked up a smattering of knowledge of roads and towns and hotels and general geographical information which really might be of use if, as Ruth said they would, the Corner House girls should go on a tour in the new seven-passenger car.

They talked about it to the exclusion of almost everything else that evening, and Agnes spread the news abroad at school the next day. That the Corner House girls really owned a car was already an important fact to their school friends.

For Ruth and Agnes were not likely to be selfish in their enjoyment of their new possession. Stinginess was not a fault in the Kenway family.

On the very second Saturday after they had come into possession of the car Neale had taken out the older girls and a party of their friends in the morning, and in the afternoon Tess and Dot had played hostesses to a lot of little girls. As Mr. Howbridge remarked with a laugh, the cost of the new car was a mere drop in the bucket. Maintenance and gasoline were the items that would deplete the pocketbooks of his wards.

As for Neale O’Neil, he almost lived in the car.

Of course, the entire family had to try it—even to Linda. Linda enjoyed it, and in her broken English stated it as her opinion that “heafen could be not like dis.” Which was a statement not to be contradicted.

Mrs. MacCall was doubtful about the utility of the machine after all. Uncle Rufus, when he went out with Neale and the little girls and not a few of the pets, including a couple of kittens and Tom Jonah, just clung to the seat-rail with both hands and actually turned gray about the corners of his mouth.

As for Aunt Sarah Maltby, she had set her face against the innovation from the first.

“But of course,” she said, in her severe way, “it doesn’t matter what I say or what my opinion may be. Nobody asks me to advise. I am a non-entity in this house.”

That was the beginning. Ruth and Agnes and even Mrs. MacCall had to coax and plead and cajole before the old lady would promise to take a ride in the car. When she did, she dressed in her Sunday dress—the one she always went to church in—and carried her prayer-book.

This was a state of “preparedness” that amused Agnes and Neale very much. Aunt Sarah evidently expected the worst. She even carried in her pocket the peppermint lozenges which she always took to church with her and nibbled at in sermon time.

Indeed, Aunt Sarah, who was a pessimist at the best of times, approached the ordeal in such a way that Ruth really began to pity her.

“I don’t care! she’d spoil all our fun,” protested Agnes, exasperated.

But the older sister said: “Perhaps she can’t help it after all, Aggie. And if she really is scared, I am sorry.”

At that Agnes whispered sharply: “Look at her face!”

Neale was running the car carefully, but at a good speed, on one of the pleasantest and smoothest highways around Milton. The air was invigorating, the outlook was beautiful, and the car ran like a charm.

In a moment of forgetfulness, perhaps, Aunt Sarah’s grim countenance had changed. It did actually seem as though there was a smile hovering about her lips. To the two girls who rode with her in the tonneau it seemed as though it must be impossible for anybody not to enjoy the ride.

“Isn’t it splendid, Aunt Sarah?” queried Ruth, with shining eyes, leaning toward the old woman.

Instantly Aunt Sarah’s face became—as usual—forbidding. She shook her head with determination.

“No, Niece Ruth, it is nothing of the kind,” she declared. “I do not like it at all. I knew I shouldn’t. I wish to return.”

“Well!” Agnes had gasped in her sister’s ear. “Don’t try to tell me! If Aunt Sarah was not almost laughing then, why, then her face slipped!”

CHAPTER VII—WHAT SAMMY DID

“I don’t care,” Agnes said, biting off her thread. “I hope I’ll never be starched and stiff.”

“But you are getting older,” went on Ruth.

“Not too decrepit to run yet,” retorted Agnes, pertly.

Ruth laughed at that, and pinched her sister’s rosy cheek. “Nevertheless,” she said, “that is one of the skirts you will be obliged to wear on our tour.”

“Oh! Our tour!” cried Agnes, ecstatically, clasping her hands. “Ouch!”

“What is the matter?” demanded Ruth, startled by her sister’s squeal.

“Stuck my finger with this horrid needle,” mumbled Agnes, sucking the pricked digit.

She went back to her sewing as Ruth went out of the room. In came Neale in cap, goggles, and leggings.

“Oh, Neale! Have you got the car out?”

“Why, Aggie!” cried the boy, without replying to her question, and eyeing the work in her lap askance. “I am surprised! You’re just like Satan—as we had it in our lesson last Sunday—aren’t you?”

“Well! I like your impudence. In what way, please?” demanded Agnes.

“Why, you’re sewing tears, aren’t you?” chuckled Neale. “And the Bible says the Evil One ‘sowed tares.’”

“Oh, don’t! It’s too great a shock. But, are you going out with the car?”

“Been out,” said the boy. “I took Mr. Howbridge over to Brenton Woods to catch the train for the West on the Q. V. We won’t see him again until we’re back from our tour.”

“Oh, yes! Our tour!” repeated Agnes; but this time she did not clasp her hands in ecstasy. She looked at her pricked finger ruefully instead.

“And coming back,” went on Neale, “I happened to run across Mr. Maynard.”

“Oh, yes!” cried Agnes again, but in an entirely different tone.

“He’d been fishing. You see, he doesn’t have much to do now that he’s out of the surveyor’s office. That’s why he—he gets into trouble so much, I suppose. That and worrying about the death of his wife and baby. I brought him home in the car.”

“Did you ask him about that Joe fellow?”

“Saleratus Joe?”

“Yes. If that’s what you are bound to call him,” Agnes said.

“I did. Mr. Maynard doesn’t know the fellow personally. He didn’t seem to remember much about that day he met Dot. He remembers her, though,” Neale said, thoughtfully. “Asked about her in a shamefaced sort of way.”

“I should think he would be ashamed.”

“He is to be pitied,” said the boy, soberly.

“Oh, yes. I suppose so. All such men are. But for little Dot to get mixed up with a drunken man——”

“It didn’t hurt her,” said Neale, stoutly. “And maybe it has helped him.”

Agnes took a minute to digest this; and she made no further comment. But she asked:

“How about that Joe? Doesn’t Mr. Maynard know anything about him?”

“He says not. Suppose we tell Mrs. Heard, and she’ll tell Mr. Collinger. Joe Dawson has sometimes worked for Jim Brady, the big politician. Mr. Collinger must know if Brady is one of the men who have been trying to get those maps and the papers away from him.”

“Well,” said Agnes, “I hope we can help bring those auto thieves to book.”

“Guess Mr. Collinger is more worried about his maps—if they got them.”

“Oh, Neale! suppose they should steal our car? Wouldn’t it be dreadful? We must catch them.”

Neale laughed. “You’re going to be a regular detective when you grow up, Aggie. I can see that,” he said.

“Put up the hammer, little boy,” advised Agnes. “Do you know that it has been decided when we are to start on our tour?”

“No. When?”

“Mrs. Heard telephoned that she will be ready to-morrow. We shall start some time the following day, so Ruthie just said.”

“Good!” declared the boy. “Say, Aggie! we’re bound to have a dandy time.”

“Even if we weren’t, I should be glad to get away from this place,” said the girl, suddenly a little cross.

“Why?” asked Neale O’Neil, in surprise.

“Because of that pest, Sammy Pinkney.”

“What about him?”

“He is fairly hounding us to death,” said Agnes, with a sigh.

“What about?”

“He has begged to go with us every hour—almost—since he first heard we were going on a long trip in our auto.” Then she suddenly giggled. “Oh, Neale! He has decided that it would be more fun to be an auto pirate than a salt water buccaneer of the old school.”

“One great kid that,” chuckled Neale, appreciatively.

“But he is an awful nuisance. He bothers the little girls whenever they go out of the house. He’s told his mother he’s going with us—and I suppose Mrs. Pinkney half believes we have invited him.”

“Cricky!” chuckled Neale again. “I imagine she’d be glad to get rid of him for a few weeks.”

“My, goodness, me!” exclaimed the startled Agnes. “She sha’n’t get rid of him at our expense—no, sir! I won’t hear of it. Neither will Ruth. And, besides, there isn’t going to be breathing space in that car after we all pile in—with Tom Jonah and the baggage, too.”

“I have an idea!” said Neale, wickedly, “that we ought to have an auto truck trailing us with all the furbelows and what-nots you girls will think it necessary to carry.”

“Mr. Smarty!” Agnes scoffed. “Remember we went camping last summer and we know something about what to take with us and what not to take.”

“That’s all right,” said Neale. “But the Corner House girls are not going to live under canvas this time—that is, not much. At the fancy hotels you’ll all want to cut a dash. How are you going to do it?”

Agnes laughed at him. “Don’t you suppose all that has been thought of?” she demanded. “Mrs. Heard will send a trunk, and so shall we, by express to the Polo House at Granthan. That is going to be our first ‘fancy’ hotel, as you call them. Then, when we leave there, the trunks will be shipped on to our next fashionable roosting place. But, oh, dear me! I don’t care much about the hotels. I want to be moving,” declared this very modern young American girl.

“Cricky!” grumbled Neale. “I bet if you have your way we’ll get pinched for speeding in every county in the state.”

Every waking hour thereafter, until, on the second day, the car was brought to the side gate of the Corner House premises, was a busy hour for the four Kenways and Neale O’Neil. Mrs. Heard came over with her personal baggage, for the route the party was to follow would not take them anywhere near her home. Besides, it was better to pack the car carefully before the start was made, and thus find out where every piece of baggage—as well as every passenger—was to be placed.

The car was roomy and comfortable; but bags and suitcases of all descriptions—to say nothing of an excited Newfoundland dog—were bound to occupy much space.

Neale declared he had groomed the car “to the nines”—and it looked it. It was new enough, in any case, for everything about it to shine and glisten. A good mechanician from the public garage had been over it the day before and pronounced every part in perfect working order.

“But that doesn’t mean that we can’t get a blow-out before going a mile,” growled Neale, who had worked so hard that he was rather pessimistic. “But, come on, girls, bring out the rest of the household furniture. You seem to have half the contents of the Corner House packed in already.”

Ruth calmly ignored this, and went about final arrangements in her usual capable manner. Nothing would be forgotten, nothing overlooked when Ruth Kenway was in charge.

The little girls were just as busy in their way as their sisters. Tess and Dot were too much excited and far too much taken up with their own affairs, to pay any attention to Sammy Pinkney.

But that hopeful youngster stuck to Ruth and Agnes like a burr—and a very annoying one.

“Aw, say! let a feller go!” was his mildest way of pleading for space in the automobile for his own small self. “I won’t get in your way.”

“No,” said Ruth, with the same decision she had expressed from the first. “No.”

“Aw, Aggie! you know me! If you say I can, I can.”

“You’re the biggest bother in the world, Sammy Pinkney!” declared the second oldest Corner House girl.

“Won’t bother you a mite. I’ll help. I’ll run errands——”

“What errands, I’d like to know?” scoffed Agnes.

“Well—you’ll want somebody to run ’em when the car breaks down——”

That settled it! Agnes would not listen to him any further.

“Say! I’ll give Dot my bicycle if you’ll let me go,” he urged on Ruth.

“I’d be afraid to have her ride it,” laughed Ruth. “The only thing you ever did give the little girls, Sammy—that goat—has been a dreadful annoyance.”

“Give us your bulldog, Sammy?” suggested Agnes, knowing that the very soul of the boy was knit to that ugly, bandy-legged beast.

“Ow!” groaned Sammy. He could not agree to that. “I tell you I’ll do anything you want me to——”

“Stay at home, then, and don’t bother us,” said Ruth, somewhat tartly for her.

“Aw, do say I can go, Aggie,” he pleaded for the last time with the other sister.

“I’d like to see you find room aboard that car!” cried Agnes, having finally packed the last bag and parcel in the tonneau.

At these words Sammy shot away like a rabbit and disappeared. Mrs. Heard and the little girls came out. Everybody else from the Corner House appeared to bid the party good-bye—even Aunt Sarah.

“It’ll rain before you get far,” prophesied this last person, grimly, “and you’ll have to come back.”

She would not admit that an automobile was fit to travel in during wet weather.

“What have you got in that basket?” demanded Agnes of Tess, suddenly pouncing upon the serious little girl.

“Oh, Aggie! Only two of Sandyface’s grandchildren. You know, we haven’t found names for them yet.”

“Two kittens!” gasped Agnes. “What do you know about that, Ruth?”

“How about Billy Bumps, too?” said Neale, looking perfectly sober.

“Oh, he and Tom Jonah would fight,” said Dot, proudly bearing her renovated Alice-doll in a brand new coat and hat. The Alice-doll really was a pleasure to look upon once more. Only, whereas her hair had originally been dark, now it was very blonde indeed, to match her pink cheeks and blue eyes.

“Of course, it isn’t very respectaful,” admitted the smallest Corner House girl, in speaking of the change in Alice’s appearance. “But ladies do bleach their hair and make it blond; and Alice always did love to be fashionable.”

Meanwhile Tess had been convinced by Ruth that an automobile tour was no place for two kittens. Tom Jonah was being taken along as a means of safety for the car. Agnes was quite sure herself that automobile thieves were only waiting their chance to steal this brand new motor car.

They all got into the car at last—Mrs. Heard, Ruth and the two smaller girls in the tonneau, heaped about with baggage, but comfortable. Tom Jonah crouched under Agnes’ feet in front, where she sat beside Neale, his head sticking out of the car and his tongue displayed like a pink woolen necktie.

Everybody shouted “good-bye!” There were plenty of neighbors to call after the touring party. And those on the street, for the first few blocks, seemed to be greatly amazed and amused by the passage of the Corner House automobile.

“Goodness!” ejaculated Agnes, in some disgust, and trying to sit up primly, “what do you suppose is the matter with folks, anyway? One would think we were a circus parade.”

“Humph! guess we do look funny,” chuckled Neale. “I once saw a picture supposed to represent the good ship Mayflower as she must have appeared off Plymouth Rock, if all the antique furniture you hear about really was brought over by the Pilgrims, as people claim. They had to hang chairs and tables and highboys and lowboys and such things from her spars, besides having an awful deckload. And I reckon we look like a large family on moving day,” finished the boy, with an expansive grin.

“We do not!” exclaimed Agnes, quite put out. “Look at that old gentleman stare. What’s he saying—and shaking his cane, too?”

“Got me,” returned her comrade on the front seat.

He increased the car’s speed and they passed people too quickly for the latter to make themselves heard—if what some of them shouted was of importance. The passing of the Corner House motor car seemed to interest and please the urchins along the way more than anybody else.

“Goodness!” murmured Mrs. Heard, “I never was so much stared at before, I do believe. What do you suppose is the matter with us?”

“They must all want to ride with us,” said Tess, quite composedly.

“Well, they just can’t!” cried Dot. “See that boy running and yelling, will you? Why, he can’t catch up.”

Once out of the city Neale (of course urgently pressed by Agnes) “let her out another notch,” as he expressed it. The car ran as smoothly as though the road was macadamized—although few highways about Milton were so well made as that. But Neale was a careful and skillful driver already, and the springs of the car were excellent.

On and on the handsome car rushed, leaving little spirals of dust behind it, and sending the small fry of rural animal life scurrying out of its path. The peculiar interest shown by pedestrians as they passed through the town, was continued out in the country.

As Neale slowed down for a railroad crossing, taking it easily and carefully, although there was no train near and the gates were up, a boy yelled:

“Hi, there! Whip behind! Whip behind, mister!”

“Now! how foolish that is,” gasped Agnes, as they jolted a little going over the rails. “What do you suppose that little imp meant?”

Neale only grunted. He was thinking, and although he increased the speed of the car a little, it was only for a short distance. Then he shut her down suddenly—and stopped.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Agnes, curiously.

“Where are you going, Neale?” asked Ruth, as the boy crept out from behind the wheel, stepped over Agnes’ feet and the dog, and leaped out into the road.

“I want to see something,” muttered Neale. He went to the rear of the car. Then he uttered a shout:

“Come and look at this, will you? What do you suppose that kid has done?”

“What kid?” asked Agnes, following him nimbly out of the car. Tom Jonah bounded out, too, glad, probably, to stretch his cramped limbs.

“Sammy Pinkney!” said Neale, pushing back his dust mask and staring.

Ruth stood up to see over the folded-back top of the car. “What is it?” she demanded, unable to see anything.

But Agnes arrived beside Neale, and saw perfectly. “Well! I never!” she ejaculated. “Sammy Pinkney! how dared you? What are you doing here?”

For Sammy was roosting, more or less comfortably, on the back of the car, and had a bright, new russet leather suitcase tied on beside him with a bit of rope. He presented a grinning, dusty, befreckled face to Neale and the Corner House girl.