"Just think!" Agnes said to Ruth. "For the first time since we came to live at the old Corner House and call it our owniest own, we are going to have real visitors. Oh, dear, me, Ruth, I wish we could have week-end parties, and dances, and all sorts of society things. I do!"
"Mercy, Agnes! And you with your hair in plaits?"
"Whose fault is that, I'd like to know," responded the beauty a bit sharply. "I'm the only girl in my set who doesn't put her hair up. Myra Stetson has worn hers up for a year—"
"She keeps house for her father and has not attended school for six months," Ruth reminded her.
"Well, Eva Larry puts hers up when her mother has company. And Pearl Howard—"
"Never mind the catalog of your friends, dear," put in Ruth, quietly. "We know you are a much abused little girl. But your hair in plaits you'd better wear for a while yet.
"As for week-end parties and the like, I will speak to Mr. Howbridge and perhaps we can give some parties this winter."
"With the kids in them!" grumbled Agnes. "I want real grown-up parties."
"Let us wait till we are really grown up for them," and the elder sister laughed.
"Goodness! you are grown up enough, Ruth Kenway," Agnes declared. "You might be married at your age. Mrs. Mac says she was."
"Hush!" exclaimed Ruth, almost shocked by such a suggestion. "You do get the most peculiar ideas in your head, Aggie."
"There's nothing peculiar about marrying," said the other girl saucily. "I'm sure everybody's 'doing it.' It's quite the proper thing. You know, as the smallest member of the catechism class replied to the question: 'What is the chief end of woman?' 'Marriage!' And 'tis, too," concluded the positive Agnes.
"Do talk sensibly. But to return. Cecile and her brother visiting us is really the first time we'll have entertained guests—save Mrs. Treble and—"
"Oh, Mrs. Trouble and Double Trouble, or Barnabetta Scruggs and her father, don't count," Agnes hastened to say. "They were only people we took in. But the Shepards are real guests. And I'm so glad you decided upon giving them two of the big front rooms, Ruthie. Those guest rooms that Uncle Peter had shut up for so many years are just beautiful. There aren't such great rooms, or such splendid old furniture in Milton, as we have."
"We have much to be thankful for," said Ruth placidly.
"We've a lot to be proud of," amended Agnes. "And our auto! My! Think of us poor little miserable Kenways cutting such a dash."
"And yet you were just now longing for more nice things," pointed out Ruth.
"That's my fatal ambition," sighed her sister. "I am a female—No! A feline—as Tess says—Napoleon. I long for more worlds to conquer like Alexander. I dream of great things like Sir Humphrey Davy and Newton. I—"
"Do be feminine in your comparisons, if not feline," suggested Ruth, laughing. "Speak of great women, not of great men."
"Oh, indeed! Why, pray? Boadicea? Queen Elizabeth? Joan of Arc—"
"Oh I know who she was," declared Dot, who had been listening, open-eyed and open-mouthed, to this harangue of the volatile sister. "She was Noah's wife—and he built a big boat, and put horses and bears and pigs and goats on it so they wouldn't be drowned—and dogs and cats. And they were fruitful and multiplied and filled the earth—"
"Oh, oh, oh!" shrieked Agnes. "That child will be the death of me! Where does she pick up her knowledge of scriptural history?"
"I guess," said Ruth, kissing the pouting lips of Dot, who did not always take kindly to being laughed at, "that our old Sandyface must have been one of those cats Noah had. She has found four more little blind kittens somewhere. And what we shall do about it, I do not know."
Dot and Tess ran squealing to the shed to see the new members of the Corner House family, while Neale said, chuckling:
"It's a regular catastrophe, isn't it? Better fill the motor car with feline creatures and let Aggie and me chase around through the country, dropping cats at farmers' barns."
"Never!" proclaimed Agnes. "We mean to keep on good terms with all the farmers about Milton. We can't have them coming out and stopping us when we go by and demanding pay for all the hens you run over, Neale O'Neil."
"Never yet ran over but one hen," declared the boy quickly. "And she was an old cluck hen—the farmer said so. He thought he really ought to pay me for killing her. And she made soup at that."
"Come, come, come, children!" admonished Ruth. "Let us get out the books and see if we have quite forgotten everything we ever knew."
They gathered around the sitting-room lamp, Sammy Pinkney having appeared. Mrs. MacCall joined them with her mending, as she loved to do in the evenings. And the Corner House study hour was inaugurated for the fall with appropriate ceremonies of baked apples on the stove and a heaping plate of popcorn in the middle of the table.
"I can study so much better when I'm chewing something," Agnes admitted.
Dot was soon nodding and Mrs. MacCall from her low rocking chair observed:
"I think little folks had better go to bed with the chickens—eh, my lassie!"
"No, Mrs. Mac; I don't want to," complained the sleepy Dot. "I've got a bed of my own."
"I'll go with her," said Tess, knowing that her little sister did not like to retire alone, even if she might object to the company of chickens.
Really, none of them studied much on this evening; but they had a happy time. All, possibly, save Sammy. The thought of going to school once again made that embryo pirate very despondent.
"'Tain't that I wouldn't like to go with the fellers, and play at recess, and hear the organ play in the big hall, and spin tops on the basement play-room floor, and all that," grumbled Sammy. "But they do try to learn us such perfectly silly things."
"What silly things?" demanded Agnes with amusement.
"Why, all 'bout 'rithmetic. Huh! Can't a feller count on his fingers? What were they given us for, I'd like to know?" demanded this youthful philosopher.
"Ow! ow!" murmured Neale, vastly amused.
"Huh!" went on Sammy. "Last teacher I had—mine and Tessie's—was all the time learning us maxims, and what things meant; like love, and charity and happiness. She was so silly, she was!
"That Iky Goronofsky is the thick one," added Sammy, with a grin of recollection. "When she was trying to make us kids understand the difference between the meaning of those three words he couldn't get it into his head. So she gave him three buttons, one for love, one for charity and one for happiness, and made him take 'em home to study."
"What did he do with them!" asked Neale, interested.
"Why, when she asked Iky the next time about love, charity and happiness, he didn't know any more than he did before," said Sammy, with disgust. 'Where's your buttons, Iky?' she asks him, and Iky hauls out two of 'em.
"'There's love, Miss Shipman, and there's charity,' says Iky, 'but my mother sewed happiness on my waist this morning.' Did you ever hear of such a dunce as that kid?" concluded Sammy, with disgust.
Sunday was always a busy day, if a quiet one, at the old Corner House. Everything had been done to prepare for the expected guests; but several times Agnes had to enter the two big rooms which were to be devoted to the use of Cecile Shepard and her brother, just for the sake of making sure that all was right and ready.
In just what style the Shepards lived Agnes did not know. That they were very well-mannered and were plainly used to what is really essential to cultivated people, the Corner House girls were sure.
The visitors were not wealthy, however; far from it. They had but a single relative—a maiden aunt—and with her they made their home when they were not at school or off on peddling trips with a van and team of horses.
Cecile and Luke arrived before noon on Monday. Neale drove Ruth and Agnes down to the station in the car to meet the visitors.
"Oh, this is just scrumptious!" the second sister declared, with a sigh. "To think that the Kenways would ever arrive at the point where they can drive to the station in their own car for guests—"
"Oh, squash!" ejaculated Neale, with disgust. "She's getting to be what Uncle Rufus calls uppity. There'll be no living in the same town with my Lady pretty soon."
"It is all right," Ruth said seriously, for she did not approve of Neale any more than she could help—that was not her policy with boys. "It is perfectly proper to be glad that our circumstances have improved."
"Oh, crickey!" snorted Neale. "You girls have got up in the world, that's a fact. But I've come down. Uncle Bill Sorber wanted me to be a ground and lofty tumbler."
The sisters laughed, and what might have been a bit of friction was escaped. Even Ruth had to admit that the ex-circus boy was the best-natured person they knew.
Well, the Shepards arrived. Cecile and Luke were just as glad to see Neale as they were to see the Corner House girls.
Luke, sitting in the seat beside Neale on the way up town, whispered to him: "Isn't she sweeter than ever? I declare! I never knew so nice a girl."
"Huh?" grunted Neale, and glared at his companion for a moment, forgetting that a chauffeur should keep both eyes on his business when running a car in a crowded street.
"Say! were you trying to climb into that coal cart or only fooling?" gasped Luke, who although several years older than Neale had none of his experience as an automobile driver.
"What did you say?" asked Neale, with his eyes looking ahead again.
"Were you trying to get into that coal cart or—"
"Aw, no! About Aggie Kenway."
"Why—why I didn't say anything about her," Luke replied. "Oh! I spoke of Miss Ruth. Isn't she a splendid girl?"
"Oh! Yes! Ruth! Some!" was the way Neale agreed with this statement of the visitor.
Luke Shepard was a very friendly person who was bound to make himself beloved by the entire Corner House family. Unless, perhaps, Aunt Sarah Maltby refused to melt before the sunshine of his smile. He was a handsome fellow, too—curly brown hair, a good brown and red complexion, well chiseled features, brown eyes set wide apart, and lips that laughed above a well molded and firm-looking chin.
Cecile was his antithesis—sprightly and small-framed, roguish of look and behavior, without an iota of hoidenishness about her. She was inordinately fond of her brother, and she could not understand how the Corner House girls had managed to get on so many years without one boy, at least, in the family.
"Of course, you've got Neale," she said to Ruth and Agnes after they had reached the house.
"And there's Sammy Pinkney," Tess put in gravely. "I'm sure he's quite as much trouble to us as a real brother could be."
At this there was a burst of uncontrollable laughter.
The little girls were fond of Luke Shepard, however. He had been very nice to them on that adventurous occasion when they had met him and his sister on the automobile tour; and on coming to the old Corner House for this visit he had not forgotten Tess and Dot. To the former he had brought a lovely, imaginative, beautifully bound story book, "full of gods and gondolas," Dot said with awe.
To Dot herself he most tactfully presented a doll. Not a doll to take the place in any way of the beloved Alice-doll. No. Luke was too wise a youth for that. But it was a new baby nevertheless that Dot was bound to be proud of.
"Oh," cried Tess, "a boy baby, Dot! And you never had a real boy baby before!"
"Or such a nice looking one, at any rate," Agnes suggested.
Dot, smiling "big," clasped the manly looking little manikin in its neat sailor suit and cap. She really was too pleased for speech for a minute or two. Then she said:
"I'm real glad you came to see us, Mr. Luke. I was glad before. Now I'm glad twice."
"You can't beat that kid," said Neale admiringly.
But the arrival of the new doll-baby put upon the smaller Corner House girls—especially upon Dot—a duty that was always taken seriously. The naming of either new dolls or new pets usually needed the heedful attention of the entire Corner House family.
The children of Sandyface, and her grandchildren, were usually an enormous care upon the little girls in this way. To name so many cats, and name them appropriately, had been in the past a matter of no little moment.
Now that Sandyface had found four more eyeless, mewing little mites, only the coming of the sailor-baby, as Dot called Luke Shepard's present, made the two little girls agree to Neale's suggestion regarding the naming of the new kittens.
They were christened briefly and succinctly: "One, Two, Three and Four."
"For we really are too busy, and company in the house, too," said Tess earnestly, "to worry over Sandyface's new family. She might have waited until some other time to find those kittens."
On that first evening of the Shepards' visit there was much ado about the name for the baby. The whole family took more or less interest in it, and suggestions galore were showered upon the anxious young mother regarding the sailor-baby.
Neale suggested that a ballot-box be arranged and that everybody write his suggestions upon slips of paper and deposit them in the box. Then Dot might be allowed to put in her hand, mix up the slips, and draw one. That name must be the sailor-baby's cognomen.
But there was too great a hazard in this to attract the smallest Corner House girl; for Aunt Sarah had already gravely suggested Zerubbabel.
"And suppose," Dot whispered, "she should write that on a paper (do you s'pose such an ugly name can be spelled!) and I should draw that out first thing! Why, a name like that would—would make an invalid of the poor child all his life!"
Therefore when, on Tuesday, the Corner House girls and their guests went for a ride in the automobile, the momentous decision regarding the new baby's name was still to be made.
There was no room for Sammy in the car on this occasion, and he was left behind to seek his own amusement with the aerial tramway. And as matters turned out he certainly was busy with that arrangement before the automobile party returned.
However, even Tess forgot all things aerial in the enjoyment of the ride. The car ran smoothly, the day was fine, and not even a "cluck hen" crossed their path. So there was not the smallest thing to mar their pleasure.
Luke rode in front with Neale; and the three older girls were so much interested in their own chatter that they scarcely thought of Tess and Dot. But they, too, were exceedingly busy with their particular affairs.
What interested them most of all through the drive was the naming of the sailor-baby. Dot sat with the Alice-doll in her arms, of course; but the new doll was hugged up very close to her side upon the seat.
"He is really a very pretty doll for a boy doll," Tess observed. "You really should have a very pretty name for him."
"I know," agreed the anxious mother. "But all the nice names seem to have been used up. Wha—what do you think of 'Brandywine,' Tessie?"
"Goodness! The name of that avenue we just passed? Why, Dot!" ejaculated the horrified older sister. "That's a nawful name! And we're temp'rance."
"Yes. It is kind of liquorish, I s'pose," admitted Dot. "But it sounds different. Tom, and Edgar, and Wilfred, and Feodor, and St. John, and Clarence, and Montmorency, and Peter, and Henry, and Vanscombe, and Michael, and all those others, have been used over and over again in naming babies," Dot said with seriousness. "You know we've heard of somebody, or know somebody, named by all of those names. Oh, Tess!" she ejaculated suddenly, "look there!"
The automobile party were just passing Mr. Stout's big tobacco barn. One leaf of the main door was open and hooked back and Dot was pointing eagerly to some large black letters painted upon the inside of this door.
"What a pretty name that is!" she whispered to Tess, excitedly. "'Nosmo'! Did you ever hear of it before?"
"No-o, Dottie, I never did," her sister agreed slowly. "'Nosmo' sounds kind of funny, doesn't it? I—I never heard of a boy called that."
"Well, Tess Kenway!" cried her little sister indignantly, "isn't that just what we want? A boy's name that hasn't ever been used on a boy before?"
"That's so, Dottie," agreed the more cautious Tess. "That is so. No boy has had it and spoiled it by being bad." Tess' opinion of the genus boy was governed largely by the attitude Ruth seemed to hold toward all boyhood.
"It's brand new," declared Dot, christening the sailor-baby on the spot, and without bell, book, or candle. "Nosmo Kenway. Isn't that nice? He's so cute, too!" and she seized the new doll and pressed her red lips to the sailor-boy's highly flushed cheek.
"Nosmo Kenway," murmured Tess. "Oughtn't he to have a middle name?"
"Oh, well," said Dot. "We can give him that afterward—if we find a good one. But middle names don't really count, after all."
The merry party of automobilists ran out as far as Mr. Bob Buckham's—the strawberry man, as they called him—a very good friend of theirs. Mrs. Buckham was confined to her chair and the Corner House girls always took her flowers or something nice when they called at the farm-house.
The Kenways and Neale went in to see the invalid for a minute, leaving Cecile and Luke Shepard alone in the car. The keen-eyed girl suddenly leaned forward and tapped her brother on the arm.
"Hul-lo!" he said, waking from a day-dream.
"Penny for your thoughts, Luke?" she suggested.
"Worth more than that, Sis."
"I know. They were about Ruth Kenway," and Cecile laughed, although her eyes were anxious.
"Witch!" exclaimed Luke, flushing a little.
"Beware, young man!" his sister said, shaking an admonitory finger.
"Beware of the dog?" queried Luke with a smile.
"Just so, Boy. There is a dog. A big one in the path."
"Why, Sis, I don't believe Ruth Kenway has ever even thought of a boy—"
"As you are thinking of her?" his sister broke in softly. "No. I think she is perfectly 'heart whole and fancy free.' And so ought you to be, Luke."
"Well, she's such a sweet girl," he declared, his eyes shining.
"She certainly is."
"Then what have you against my—my liking her?"
"There is nothing I'd like better in this world, Luke," his sister declared earnestly, "than to see you happy in the friendship of such a girl as Ruth."
"Then—"
"Remember Neighbor," Cecile said, earnestly.
"Oh, bother Neighbor!" muttered Luke.
"No. You would not like to see him bothered. And he is a very good friend of yours. He can and will help you get a start in the world after you have finished at college. His aid may mean ten years' advantage to you."
"Do you suppose I care what Neighbor does with his money?" demanded Luke, hotly.
"No. Not for just what the money would bring you," she agreed. "But think! What have you to offer Ruth Kenway if you should come to the point where you might ask her to engage herself to you? We're just as poor as Job's turkey after it was picked to the bones!"
"I know it, Sis," groaned the young fellow.
"And without Neighbor's help you may have a long and hard struggle getting anywhere," Cecile said gravely.
"Too true, Sis."
"Well—then—"
The Kenways and Neale O'Neil reappeared. The visiting brother fell silent. Luke Shepard scarcely had a word to say during the remainder of the automobile ride.
Returning to town, the automobile party passed Stout's tobacco barn again and when it came in sight Dot eagerly began to explain to the older girls how and where she had found a name for the sailor-baby that Luke Shepard had given her.
"That is a real pretty name I think," said Ruth, absently. "And quite new I am sure."
Agnes demanded again where the smallest Corner House girl had seen the name, 'Nosmo' painted. "Why!" she exclaimed, "it says 'king'—that's what is painted on that door, children."
"Oh, but, Sister!" exclaimed Tess. "That is the other half of the big door. They've shut the half that was open when we rode along before and opened the other one." But Agnes was not listening to this explanation. She had turned back to Ruth and Cecile.
Dot was eagerly repeating something over and over to herself. Tess turned to demand what it was.
"Oh, Tessie!" the smallest Corner House girl cried, "that sounds b-e-a-u-ti-ful!"
"What does?" demanded her sister.
"I've just the nicest middle name for this sailor-baby," and she hugged her new possession again.
"What is it?" asked the interested Tess.
"Nosmo King Kenway. Isn't that nice?" eagerly cried the little girl. "It's—it's so 'ristocratic. Don't you think so, Tess?"
Tess repeated the full name, too. It did sound rather nice. The oftener you said it the better it sounded. And—yet—there was something a wee bit peculiar about it. But Tess was too kind-hearted to suggest anything wrong with the name, as long as Dot liked it so much. And she had found it all her very own self!
"I wonder what Sammy will say to that," murmured Dot placidly. "I guess he'll think it is a nice name, won't he?"
"Well, if he doesn't it won't make any difference," Tess said loftily.
Just at that time, however, (though quite unsuspected by the Corner House girls) Sammy Pinkney had his mind quite filled with other and more important matters.
Since his long illness in the spring Sammy had remained something of a stranger to his oldtime boy friends. Of course, as soon as he got into school again and associated with the boys of his own class once more, he would get back into the "gang" as he called it. He was not a boy to be gibed because he played with girls so much.
However, habit brought him to the side gate of the Corner House on this afternoon, whether the little girls were at home or not. He was so often in and out of the house that neither Mrs. MacCall nor Linda paid much attention to him; for although Sammy Pinkney was as "full of mischief as a chestnut is of meat" (to quote Mrs. MacCall) he never touched anything about the house that was not his, nor wandered into the rooms upstairs, save the one from the window of which the aerial tramway was strung to the window of his own bedroom "scatecornered" across Willow Street.
His aim was the window of the little girls' big playing and sleeping room now, for the wire basket chanced to be fastened at this end of the line. He had it in his mind to pull the basket over to his own house, fill it there with some sort of cargo, and draw it back and forth, amusing himself by imagining that he was loading a ship from the dock.
"Or, maybe," Sammy ruminated, "I'll have the old ship wrecked, and the lifesavers will put out the life buoy; and we'll bring the passengers ashore. Crickey! that'll be just the thing. I'll save 'em all from drownin'—that's what I'll do!"
Then he looked about in some anxiety for the wrecked passengers of the foundered steamship which he immediately imagined was cast on the reef just about as far from the Corner House as his own domicile stood.
"Got to have passengers!" cried Sammy. "Oh, crickey! the dolls would be just the thing. But I promised I wouldn't touch them. Aw, pshaw! a feller can't have much fun after all where there's a lot of girls around."
Not that the girls were here to bother Sammy Pinkney now; but he felt the oppressive effect of Dot's mandatory decree.
"If a fellow had forty dolls he wouldn't be afraid to give them a ride on this aerial tramway!"
Wandering downstairs again and out upon the side porch he found Sandyface lying in the sun, but within sight and hearing of the four new blind babies which were nested upon Uncle Rufus' old coat just within the shed door.
"Je-ru-sa-lem!" gasped Sammy, his eyes big with a sudden idea.
He knelt down beside the little soft balls of fur, and Sandyface came to rub around him and worship likewise. But she had no idea of the thought that ran riot in Sammy's head.
"Say! they'd never know they was disturbed," muttered the boy.
He gathered up the old coat, with the four little mites in it, and started stealthily for the back stairs. Sandyface, not at all disturbed in her mind, followed, purring, but with no intention of quite losing sight of her babies. The little girls were in the habit of carrying her progeny all about the place and always brought them back in safety.
Sammy stole up the stairs on tiptoe. He knew very well he was up to mischief and he did not wish to meet Mrs. MacCall, or even Linda. For the Finnish girl who helped the housekeeper had her private opinion of Sammy Pinkney—and often expressed it publicly.
"If I haf a boy brudder like him, I sew him up in a bag—oh, yes!" was one of the mildest threats that Linda ever made regarding Sammy.
Sammy pushed up the screen and placed the coat, with the four kittens asleep on it, carefully in the deep wire basket. Sandyface, interested, leaped upon the window sill, and smelled of the kittens and the basket. Then she craned her neck to look down to the ground.
"You'd better not jump, cat," warned Sammy, unfastening the rope that ran through blocks at both ends and so enabled one to pull the basket back and forth. "It's a long way to the ground."
Sandyface had no such silly idea in her wise old head. As Sammy turned away for a moment she stepped gingerly into the basket, moved the squirming kittens over, and settled down to nurse them. A little thing like being twenty feet or so up in the air with her babies did not disturb Sandyface—much.
"Hey, you!" exclaimed Sammy, grabbing the old cat away before the snuffling little kittens had really found she was with them. "Can't take the whole crew and all the passengers off the wreck at once. You'll overload the lifecar. Scat!" and he put her down upon the floor.
But the kittens began to whine now; they were being cheated, they thought, and they desired their mother very much. Sandyface replied to them and jumped upon the window sill again.
"Hey!" Sammy said, "didn't I tell you to wait till the next load? Aw! look at that cat!"
For the mother cat had stepped into the basket again, purring, and once more settled down.
"All right, then," ejaculated Sammy in disgust, "if you're bound to go along! But don't blame me if you're so heavy that the old carrier busts."
He carefully drew the basket out upon the wire, away from the house. Sandyface lifted her head; but as she was very comfortable and had her family with her, she made no great objection as the basket swung out into space.
"Je-ru-sa-lem!" gasped Sammy, with fearful joy. "Bet that old basket would hold all the other cats too. Wish I had the bunch of 'em—Spotty, and Almira, and Popocatepetl, and Bungle, and Starboard, Port, Hard-a-Lee and Main-sheet! And Almira's got four kittens of her own somewhere. And so's Popocatepetl. Whew! that makes—makes—"
But Sammy did not like arithmetic enough to figure up this sum; and he did not seem to have fingers enough just then to count them. So he gave it up. A cat and four kittens swinging out over Willow Street, with all the winds of heaven blowing about them, should have satisfied even Sammy Pinkney.
The boy pulled the basket cautiously to the extreme end of the wire—until the carrier bumped against the clapboards under his own bedroom window. He saw Sandyface raise her head again and glare around. Half asleep until this time she had not realized that she and her babies were being so marvelously transported from their own home to the cottage where Sammy resided.
"Crickey!" exclaimed the boy suddenly. "If mother comes out and sees 'em—or if that there bulldog Buster hears those cats meowing, there'll be trouble over there."
He started anxiously to draw the cats and the carrier back to the Corner House. In some way the line by which he drew the basket became fouled at the other end; or the pulleys on the wire became chocked. Sammy could not tell just what the trouble was, anyway.
But to his dismay the basket stuck midway of the line. High over the middle of Willow Street it stopped, and Sandyface was now standing up and telling the neighborhood just how scared she felt for her babies and herself.
"Lie down, cat!" the perturbed Sammy cried to her. "You'll fall overboard and drown—I mean, break your silly neck! S-st! Lie down!"
Tom Jonah, the old house dog, appeared suddenly below and began to bark. Billy Bumps came galloping around the house, shook his horns in disapproval, and "bla-ated" loudly.
Linda came to the kitchen door, beheld the cat in the basket high on the wire, and seemed to understand the cause of the trouble with uncanny certainty.
"That iss the Pinkney boy!" she cried. "If he was my brudder—"
Mrs. MacCall, called by the clatter, ran out. Aunt Sarah Maltby, even, appeared at the door, while Uncle Rufus limped up from the hen houses mildly demanding:
"What's done happen' to dem cats? Don't I hear dem prognosticatin' about, somewhar's?"
"Sammy Pinkney!" cried Mrs. MacCall, the first to spy the boy at the window of the little girls' play-room, "what are you doing up there?"
"He's got the cat and the kittens in that basket. Did you ever?" exclaimed Aunt Sarah.
"You naughty boy!" commanded Mrs. MacCall, "you pull that thing right back here and let poor Sandyface out."
"I can't, Mrs. MacCall," woefully declared the boy who wanted to be a pirate.
"Then pull it over to your house," said the housekeeper.
"I—I can't do that either," confessed Sammy.
"Why not, I should admire to know?" demanded Aunt Sarah.
"'Cause it's stuck," gloomily explained Sammy. "I can't pull it one way, nor yet the other. Oh, dear! I wish that cat would stop yowling!"
What he feared happened at that moment. His mother, hearing the commotion in the street and seeing a crowd beginning to gather, ran out of the house. She was always expecting something to happen to Sammy; and if a crowd gathered anywhere near the house she surmised the most dreadful peril for her son.
"Sammy! Sammy!" she shrieked. "What has become of Sammy?"
"Here I am, Ma," replied Sammy, with disgust.
"What's the matter with you? Come home this minute!" commanded Mrs. Pinkney, who was a rather near-sighted woman, and having run out without her glasses she did not spy her son in the window of the Corner House.
"I—I can't," confessed the boy, rather shaken.
At that moment Mrs. Pinkney saw the neighbors pointing upward, and hearing them say: "See up there? In the basket! The poor thing!" she naturally thought they referred to the peril of her young son.
"Oh, Sammy Pinkney! But you just wait till your father gets home to-night!" she cried, trying to peer up at the wire. "I knew you'd get into mischief with that thing Neale O'Neil strung up there. Whatever has the boy tried to do? Walk tight-rope?"
"It's in the basket," somebody tried to explain to her.
That was too much for the excitable Mrs. Pinkney.
"He'll fall out of it! Of course he will. And break his precious neck! Oh, get a blanket! Some of you run for the fire ladders! How will we get him down?"
She sat down on the grass, threw her apron over her head, and refused to look upward at the wire carrier in which Sandyface and her kittens were suspended, and out of which she expected her reckless son to fall at any moment.
It was at this exciting moment, and into the hubbub made by the neighbors and Sandyface, that the automobile party whizzed around the corner. Neale brought the car to a sudden stop and everybody screamed.
"That Sammy Pinkney!" gasped Tess, in despair. "I just knew he'd get into something!"
What with Mrs. Pinkney almost in hysterics, Tom Jonah barking, the goat blatting, Aunt Sarah scolding, and the neighbors in a general uproar, it was scarcely possible for anybody to make himself heard.
Therefore Neale said nothing. He hopped out from behind the steering wheel of the touring car and ran into the back premises, from which he dragged the tall fruit-picking ladder that Uncle Rufus had stowed away.
Fortunately before any excited person turned in a fire alarm, Neale, with the help of Luke Shepard and Uncle Rufus, set up the step-ladder directly under the squalling cat and her kittens. From the top step, on which he perched precariously with Luke and the old negro steadying the ladder, Neale reached up with a rake and unhooked the hanging basket from the tramway.
It was rather a delicate piece of work, and the children were scarcely assured of Sandyface's safety—nor was the old cat sure of it herself—until Neale, hanging the basket on the reversed garden rake, lowered the entire family to the ground.
"Sartain suah am glad to see dat ol' coat ob' mine again," mumbled Uncle Rufus, as everybody else was congratulating one another upon the safety of the cats. "I had a paper dollar tucked away ag'in some time w'en I'd need it, in de inside pocket of dat ol' coat. It moughty near got clean 'way f'om me, 'cause of dat boy's foolishness. Sartain suah am de baddes' boy I ever seen."
The consensus of opinion seemed to follow the bent of Uncle Rufus' mind. Sammy was in evil repute in the neighborhood in any case; this was considered the capsheaf.
Had it not been that the aerial tramway was so securely affixed to the two houses, and to take it down would be to deprive Tess, who was innocent, of some amusement, Mrs. Pinkney would have ordered the connections between the two houses severed at once.
As it was, she drove the shamefaced Sammy into the house ahead of her, and some of his boy acquaintances, lingering with ghoulish curiosity outside, heard unmistakable sounds of punishment being inflicted upon the culprit.
He was then sent up to his room to meditate. And just outside his screened window was the tantalizing tramway which Neale had repaired and which was again in good working order.
Sammy had been forbidden to use the new plaything; but the little Corner House girls soon began to feel sorry for him. Even Tess thought that his punishment was too hard.
"For he didn't really hurt Sandyface and the kittens. Only scared 'em," she said.
"But s'pose they'd've got dizzy and fell out—like I did out of the swing?" Dot observed, inclined to make the matter more serious even than her sister. "Then what would have happened?"
Tess nevertheless felt sorry for the culprit, and seeing his woe-begone and tear-stained face pressed close to his chamber window, she wrote the following on a piece of pasteboard, stood it upright in the basket and drew it across so that Sammy might read it:
The "catastrophy" as Neale insisted upon calling the accident, threw some gloom into an otherwise pleasant day—for the little girls at least. And that evening something else was discovered that sent Dot to bed in almost as low a state of mind as that with which Sammy Pinkney retired.
This second unfortunate incident happened after supper, when they were all gathered in the sitting room, Neale, too, being present. Luke asked Dot if she had decided upon a name for the new baby.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Luke," the smallest Corner House girl replied. "The sailor-baby was christened to-day. Didn't you know!"
"I hadn't heard about it," he confessed. "What is he called?"
Dot told him proudly. And Tess said:
"Don't you think it is a pretty name? Dot found it all her own self. It was painted on a barn."
"What's that?" asked Neale suddenly. "What was painted on a barn?"
"The sailor-baby's name," Dot said proudly. "'Nosmo King Kenway.'"
"On a barn!" repeated the puzzled Neale. "Whose barn?"
When he learned that it was Mr. Stout's tobacco barn he looked rather funny and asked several other questions of the little girls.
Then he drew a sheet of paper toward him and with a pencil printed something upon it, which he passed to Agnes. She burst into laughter at once, and passed the paper on.
"What is it?" Dot asked curiously. "Is it a funny picture he's drawed?"
"It's funnier than a picture," laughed Luke, who had taken a squint at the paper. "I declare, isn't that a good one!"
"I don't think you folks are very polite," Tess said, rather haughtily, for the others were not going to show the paper to the little girls. On the sheet Neale had arranged the letters of the new baby's name as they were meant to be read—for he knew what was painted upon the inside of the doors of Mr. Stout's barn:
Ruth, however, would not let the joke go on. She took Dot up on her lap and explained kindly how the mistake had been make. For Nosmo was a pretty name; nobody could deny it. And, of course, King sounded particularly aristocratic.
Nevertheless, Dot there and then dropped the sailor-baby's fancy name, and he became Jack, to be known by that name forever more.
After the smaller girls had disappeared stairward, Neale and Luke unfolded one of the card-tables and began a game of chess which shut them entirely out of the general conversation for the remainder of the evening.
The girls and Mrs. MacCall chatted companionably. They had much to tell each other, for, after all, the Corner House girls and Cecile Shepard had spent but one adventurous night together and they needed to learn the particulars of each other's lives before they really could feel "at home with one another," as Agnes expressed it.
Cecile and her brother could scarcely remember their parents; and the maiden aunt they lived with—a half sister of their father's—was the only relative they knew anything about.
"Oh, no," Cecile said, "we can expect no step-up in this world by the aid of any interested relative. There is no wealthy and influential uncle or aunt to give us a helping hand. We're lucky to get an education. Aunt Lorena makes that possible with her aid. And she does what she can, I know full well, only by much self-sacrifice."
Then the cheerful girl began to laugh reminiscently. "That is," she pursued, "I can look forward to the help of no fairy godmother or godfather. But Luke is in better odor with Neighbor than I am."
"'Neighbor'!" repeated Ruth. "Who is he? Or is it a what?"
"Or a game?" laughed Agnes. "'Neighbor'!"
"He is really great fun," said Cecile, still laughing. "So I suppose he might be called a game. He really is a 'neighbor,' however. He is a man named Henry Harrison Northrup, who lives right beside Aunt Lorena's little cottage in Grantham.
"You see, Luke and I used always to work around Aunt Lorena's yard, and have a garden, and chickens, and what-not when we were younger. Everybody has big yards in that part of Grantham. And Mr. Northrup, on one side, was always quarreling with auntie. He is a misogynist—"
"A mis-what-inest?" gasped Mrs. MacCall, hearing a new word.
"Oh, I know!" cried Agnes, eagerly. "A woman-hater. A man who hates women."
"Humph!" scoffed Mrs. MacCall, "is there such indeed? And what do they call a man-hater?"
"That, Mrs. MacCall, I cannot tell you," laughed Cecile. "I fear there are no women man-haters—not really. At least there is no distinctive title for them in the dictionary."
"So much the worse for the dictionary, then," said the Scotch woman. "And, of course, that's man-made!"
"It was only the Greeks who were without 'em," put in Ruth, smiling. "The perfectly good, expressive English word 'man-hater' is in the dictionary without a doubt."
"But do go on about Neighbor," Agnes urged. "Does he quarrel with you people all the time?"
"Not with Luke," Cecile explained. "He likes Luke. He is really very fond of him, although it seems positively to hurt him to show love for anybody.
"But a long time ago Mr. Northrup began to show an interest in Luke. He would come to the fence between his and Aunt Lorena's places, and talk with Luke by the hour. But if either I or aunty came near he'd turn right around and walk away.
"He never allows a woman inside his door and hasn't, they say, for twenty years. He has a Japanese servant—the only one that was ever seen in Grantham; and they get along without a woman."
"I'd like tae see intae that hoos," snapped Mrs. MacCall, shaking her head and dropping into her broad Scotch, as she often did when excited. "What could twa' buddies of men do alone at housekeeping!"
"Oh, the Jap is trained to it," Cecile said. "Luke says everything is spick and span there. And Mr. Northrup himself, although he dresses queerly in old-fashioned clothes, has always clean linen and is well brushed.
"But he does not often appear outside of his own yard. He really hates to meet women. His front gate is locked. Luke climbs the fence when he goes to see Neighbor; but people with skirts aren't supposed to be able to climb fences; so Mr. Northrup is pretty safe. Even the minister's wife doesn't get in."
"But why do you call him Neighbor?" asked Ruth again.
"That's what he told Luke to call him in the first place. We were not very old when Luke's strange friendship with Mr. Northrup began. After they had become quite chummy Luke, who was a little fellow, asked the old gentleman if he couldn't call him Uncle Henry. You see, Luke liked him so much that he wanted to say something warmer than Mister.
"But that would never do. Mr. Northrup seemed to think that might connect him in people's minds with Aunt Lorena. So he told Luke finally to call him Neighbor.
"Of course, the old gentleman is really a dear—only he doesn't know it," continued Cecile. "He thinks he hates women, and the idea of marriage is as distasteful to him as a red rag is to a bull.
"He is going to leave Luke all his money he says. At any rate, he has promised to do something for him when he gets out of college if he manages to graduate in good odor with the faculty," and Cecile laughed.
"But if Luke should suggest such a thing as marrying—even if the girl were the nicest girl in the world—Neighbor would not listen to it. He would cut their friendship in a moment, I know," added the girl seriously. "And his help may be of great value to Luke later on."
If Cecile had some reason for telling the older Corner House girls and Mrs. MacCall this story she did not point the moral of it by as much as a word or a look. They were quickly upon another topic of conversation. But perhaps what she had said had taken deep root in the heart of one, at least, of her audience.
Things sometimes begin to go wrong the very moment one wakes up in the morning.
Then there is the coming down to breakfast with a teeny, weeny twist in one's temper that makes some unfeeling person say:
"I guess you got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning."
Now, of course, that is silly. There can be no wrong side to a bed—that is, to get out of. Getting up has nothing to do with it. Things are just wrong and that is all there is to it.
Fortunately this state of mind seldom lasted all day with any of the four Corner House girls; nor did they often begin the day in such a humor.
But there are exceptions to every rule, they say. And this Wednesday most certainly was the day when matters were "at sixes and sevens" for Dorothy Kenway.
It would not be at all surprising if the trouble started the evening before when she learned that she had inadvertently named her new baby No Smoking. That certainly was cause for despair as well as making one feel horribly ridiculous.
Of course, Ruth in her kind way, had tried to make the smallest Corner House girl forget it; but Dot remembered it very clearly when morning came and she got up.
Then, she could not find the slippers she had worn the day before; and if Mrs. MacCall saw her with her best ones on, there would be something said about it—Dot knew that.
Then, Tess seemed suddenly very distant to her. She had something on her mind and carried herself with her very "grown-upest" air with Dot. The latter, on this morning particularly, hated to admit that Tess was more than a very few days older than herself.
Tess went off on this business that made her so haughty, all by herself, right after breakfast. When Dot called after her:
"Where are you going, Tess?" the latter had said very frankly, "Where you can't go," and then went right on without stopping for a moment to argue the point.
"I do think that is too mean for anything!" declared Dot to herself, quite too angry to cry. She sat sullenly on the porch steps, and although she heard Sandyface purring very loudly and suggestively, just inside the woodshed door, she would not get up to go to see the old cat's babies—of which Sandyface was inordinately proud.
"Wait," ruminated Dot, shaking her head. "Wait till Tess Kenway wants me to go somewhere with her. I won't go! There, now!"
So she sat, feeling very lonesome and miserable, and "enjoying" it immensely. She need not have been lonely. She could hear the older girls and Luke laughing in the front of the house, and she would have been welcomed had she gone there. Ruth was always a comforter, and even Agnes seldom said the smallest girl nay.
But Dot had managed to raise a laugh a little while before—she being the person laughed at. She chanced to hear Luke, who was running lightly over the old and yellowed keys of the piano, say:
"No wonder these instruments cost so much. You know it takes several elephants alone to make these," and he struck another chord.
Dot had heard about the intelligence of elephants and like most other little people believed that the great pachyderms could do almost anything. But this was too much for even Dot Kenway's belief.
"Oh, Ruth! elephants can't work at that trade, can they?" she demanded.
"What trade, honey?" asked the surprised older sister.
"Piano making. I should think that carpenters built pianos—not elephants."
Of course, the older ones had laughed, and Dot's spirits had fallen another degree, although Ruth was careful to explain to the little girl that Luke had meant it took the tusks of several elephants to fashion the ivory keys for one piano.
However, Dot was in no mood for "tagging" after the older ones. She just wanted to sit still and suffer! She heard Mabel Creamer "hoo-hooing" for her from beyond the yard fence, but she would not answer. Had it not been for the Alice-doll (which of course she hugged tight to her troubled little breast) life would have scarcely seemed worth living to the smallest Corner House girl.
And just then she looked up and saw a picture across the street even more woe-begone than the one she herself made. It was Sammy Pinkney, gloom corrugating his brow, an angry flush in his cheeks, and sullenly kicking the toe first of one shoe and then the other against the pickets of the fence where he stood.
It was evident that Sammy had been forbidden freedom other than that of his own premises. He stared across at the smallest Corner House girl; but he was too miserable even to hail Dot.
After all, it seemed to the latter, that Sammy was being inordinately punished for having given Sandyface and her family an aerial ride. Besides, misery loves company. Dot was in no mood to mingle with the joyous and free. But Sammy's state appealed to her deeply.
She finally got up off the step and strolled out of the yard and across the street.
"'Lo, Sammy," she said, as the boy continued to stare in another direction though knowing very well that she was present before him.
"What's the matter, Sammy?" she asked.
"Ain't nothin' the matter," he denied, kicking on the pickets again.
"Dear me," sighed Dot, "I just think everything's too mean for anything!"
"Huh!"
"And everybody at my house is mean to me, too," added the little girl, stirring up her own bile by the audible reiteration of her thoughts. "Yes, they are!"
"Huh!" repeated the scornful Sammy. "They ain't nowhere near as mean to you as my folks are to me."
"You don't know—"
"Did they lick you?" demanded the boy fiercely.
"No-o."
"And then make you stay in your room and have your supper there?"
"No-o."
"Ma brought it up on a tray," the boy said fiercely, "so I couldn't get no second helping of apple dumpling."
"Oh, Sammy!" Somehow, after all, his misery seemed greater than her own. Yet there was a sore spot in the little girl's heart. "I—I wish I could run away," she blurted out, never having thought of such a thing until that very moment. "Then they'd see."
"Hist!" breathed Sammy, coming closer and putting his lips as close to the little girl's ear as the pickets would allow. "Hist! I am going to run away!"
Dot took this statement much more calmly than he expected.
"Oh, yes," she said. "When you go to be a pirate. You've told me that before, Sammy Pinkney." In fact, she had been hearing this threat ever since she had come to the old Corner House and become acquainted with this youngster.
"And I am going to be a pirate," growled Sammy, with just as deep a voice as he could muster.
"Oh! not now?" gasped Dot, suddenly realizing that this occasion was fraught with more seriousness than any previous one of like character. "You aren't going right off now to be a pirate, Sammy Pinkney?"
"Yes, I am," declared the boy.
"Not now? Not this morning? Not before your mother comes back from marketing?" for she had seen Mrs. Pinkney's departure a few minutes before.
"Yes, I am," and Sammy clinched it with a vigorous nod, although he had not meant to run away until nightfall. People usually waited for night to run away so it seemed to Sammy, but he was not going to have his intention doubted.
"Oh, Sammy!" gasped Dot, clasping her hands across the Alice-doll's stomach, "are—are there girl pirates?"
"Are there what?" questioned Sammy in doubt.
"Can girls run away and be pirates, too?"
"Why—er—they wouldn't dars't."
"Yes, I would."
"You! Dot Kenway?"
"Yes I would," repeated Dot stubbornly.
"You want to be a pirate?" repeated Sammy. Of course he would rather have a boy to run away with. But then—
"Why can't girls be pirates?" demanded the logical Dot. "Don't pirates have to have somebody to cook and wash and keep house for them?"
"I—I don't know," admitted Sammy honestly. "I never read about any girl pirates. But," as he saw Dot's pretty face beginning to cloud over, "I don't know why there shouldn't be, if they wasn't too 'fraid."
"I won't be afraid," Dot declared, steeling herself as she had once done when she was forced to go to the dentist's office.
"We-ell," began Sammy still doubtfully. But Dot was nothing if not determined when once she made up her mind.
"Now, you come right along, Sammy Pinkney, if we're going to run away and be pirates. You know your mother won't let you if she comes home and catches you here."
"But—but we ought to take something to eat—and some clothes—and—and a pistol and a knife—"
"Oo-ee!" squealed the little girl. "You won't take any horrid pistol and knife if you're going to run off to be pirates with me, Sammy Pinkney. Why, I'd be afraid to go with you."
"Huh!" grumbled Sammy, "you don't haf to go."
"But you said I could," Dot declared, sure of her position. "And now you can't back out—you know you can't, Sammy. That wouldn't be fair."
"Aw, well. We gotter have money," he objected faintly.
"I'll run and get my purse," the little girl said cheerfully. "I've got more than fifty cents in it."
But now unwonted chivalry began to stir faintly in Sammy's breast. If they were going away together, it should be his "treat." He marched into the house, smashed his bank with the kitchen poker, and came out with a pocket full of silver and nickels that looked as if they amounted to much more than they really did.
However, the sinews of war in his pocket was not without a certain inspiration and comfort. Money would go a long way toward getting them to a place where their respective families could neither nag nor punish them.
As runaways they may have been different from most. But, then, Sammy and Dot were very modern runaways indeed. People who saw them merely observed two very well dressed children, walking hand in hand toward the suburbs of Milton; the little girl hugging a doll to her breast and the boy with a tight fist in one pocket holding down a couple of dollars worth of change.
Who would have dreamed that they were enamored of being pirates and expected to follow a career of rapine and bloodthirsty adventure on the Spanish Main?