The Corner House Girls in a Play

"Do you think so?"

"Oh, yes! For she is the very nicest lady you ever saw, Mr. Howbridge. And I do think you might let us give some of the money to the hospital that Uncle Peter forgot to give – if he had been reminded, of course."

"That child should enter my profession when she grows up," said Mr. Howbridge to Ruth, when Tess had been excused. "She'll split hairs in argument even now. What's started her off on this hospital business?"

Ruth told him. She told, too, what Tess did each month with her own pin money, and the next allowance day Tess was surprised to find an extra half dollar in her envelope.

"Oh – ee!" she cried. "Now I can give something to the hospital fund, can't I, Ruthie?"

Meanwhile, Agnes, with Eva Larry, Myra Stetson, and others of her closest friends (Agnes had a number of bosom chums) waited solemnly in Mr. Marks' office. More than the basket ball team was present in anxious waiting for the principal's appearance.

"Where's Trix Severn?" demanded Eva in a whisper of the other girls. "She ought to be in this."

"In what?" demanded another girl, trying to play the part of innocence.

"Ah-yah!" sneered Eva, very inelegantly. "As though you didn't know what it is all about!"

"Well, I'm sure I don't," snapped this girl. "Mr. Marks sent for me. I don't belong to your old basket ball team."

"No. But you were with us on that car last May," said Agnes, sharply, "You know what we're all called here for."

"No, I don't."

"If you weren't told so publicly as we were to come here, you'll find that he knows all about your being in it," said Eva.

"And that will amount to the same thing in the end, Mary Breeze," groaned Agnes.

"I don't know at all what you are talking about," cried Miss Breeze, tossing her head, and trying to bolster up her own waning courage.

"If you don't know now, you'll never learn, Mary," laughed Myra Stetson. "We are all in the same boat."

"You bet we are!" added the slangy Eva.

"Every girl here was on that car that day coming from Fleeting," announced Agnes, after a moment, having counted noses. "You were in the crowd, Mary."

"What day coming from Fleeting?" snapped the girl, who tried to "bluff," as Neale O'Neil would have termed it.

"The time the car broke down," cried another. "Oh, I remember!"

"Of course you do. So does Mary," Eva said. "We were all in it."

"And, oh, weren't those berries good!" whispered Myra, ecstatically.

"Well, I don't care!" said Mary Breeze, "you started it, Aggie Kenway."

"I know it," admitted Agnes, hopelessly.

"But nobody tied you hand and foot and dragged you into that farmer's strawberry patch – so now, Mary!" cried Eva Larry. "You needn't try to creep out of it."

"Say! Trix seems to be creeping out of it," drawled Myra. "Don't you s'pose Mr. Marks has heard that she was in the party?"

"Sh!" said Agnes, suddenly. "Here he comes."

The principal came in, stepping in his usual quick, nervous way. He was a small, plump man, with rosy cheeks, eyeglasses, and an ever present smile which sometimes masked a series of very sharp and biting remarks. On this occasion the smile covered but briefly the bitter words he had to say.

"Young ladies! Your attention, please! My attention has been called to the fact that, on the twenty-third of last May – a Saturday – when our basket ball team played that of the Fleeting schools, you girls – all of you – on the way back from the game, were guilty of entering Mr. Robert Buckham's field at Ipswitch Curve, and appropriated to your own use, and without permission, a quantity – whether it be small or large – of strawberries growing in that field. The farmer himself furnishes me with the list of your names. I have not seen him personally as yet; but as Mr. Buckham has taken the pains to trace the culprits after all this time has elapsed he must consider the matter serious.

"What particular punishment shall be meted out to you, I have not decided. As a general and lasting rebuke, however, I had thought of forfeiting all the games the team has already won in the county series, and refuse permission to you to play again this year. But by doing that the schools of Milton would be punished in total, for the athletic standing of all would be lowered.

"Now I have considered a more equitable way of making you young ladies pay the penalty of that very unladylike and dishonest proceeding. If the Board of Education sanctions a production of The Carnation Countess by the pupils of the Milton schools, all you young ladies will be debarred from taking any part whatever in the play.

"I see very well," pursued Mr. Marks, "that you who were guilty of robbing Mr. Buckham are girls who would be quite sure of securing prominent parts in the play. You are debarred. That, at present, is all I shall say on this subject. If the farmer claims damages, that will be another matter."

With his rosy face smiling and his eyeglasses sparkling, the principal dismissed the woeful party. They filed out of the office, very glum indeed. And Mary Breeze was more than a little inclined to blame Agnes.

"I don't care! I took only a few berries myself," she complained. "And we none of us would have thought of going over that fence and raiding the strawberry patch if it hadn't been for Agnes."

"Ah-yah!" repeated Eva, with scorn. "What's the use of saying that? Aggie may have been the first one over the fence; but we were all right after her. She may have a little the quickest mind in this crowd, but her limbs are no quicker."

"And how about Trix?" murmured Myra Stetson. "How is it she has escaped the deluge?"

That is what Neale O'Neil asked when he met Agnes just before she reached the old Corner House.

"Oh, Aggie, how did you come out?" he asked soberly. "Was Mr. Marks just as hard on you as he could be?"

"I think so," Agnes replied gravely. "We don't just know yet what he means to do. Only in part. But that part is just awful!"

"Was the row about Buckham's berries?"

"Yes."

"I thought so. What's he going to do to you? Make you forfeit all the games?"

"No. Maybe something worse than that."

"Worse? What is it?" asked Neale, in wonder.

"He says we none of us can act in that play he told about this morning."

"Huh!" muttered the boy, eyeing Agnes' flushed face and tearful eyes in surprise. "Do you care?"

"Oh, Neale! I know I can act. I love it. I've always been crazy for it. And now, when there's maybe a chance, I am not – going – to – be – let!"

"Goodness! do you really feel so bad about it, Aggie?"

"I – I – Why, my heart will be just broken if I can't act in The Carnation Countess," sobbed the Corner House girl.

"Oh, cricky! Don't turn on the sprinkler again, Aggie," begged Neale, in a panic.

"I – I just can't help it! To think of there being a play acted in this town, and I might be in it!" wailed Agnes. "And now it's just out of my reach! It's too mean for anything, that's what it is!"

She threatened to burst into another flood, and Neale tried to head the tears off by saying:

"Don't cry again, Aggie. Oh, don't! If you won't cry I'll try to find some way of getting you out of the scrape."

"You – you can't, Neale O'Neil!"

"We – ell, I can try."

"And I wouldn't want to get out of it myself unless the other girls escaped punishment, too."

"You're a good little sport, Aggie. I always said so," Neale declared, admiringly. "Say, that reminds me!" he added, suddenly. "Were all the girls up before Mr. Marks?"

"All who went over to Fleeting that day, do you mean?"

"Yes. All that were in that car that broke down."

"Why – yes – I think so."

"Huh!" grunted Neale, thoughtfully.

"All but one anyway."

"Hullo! Who was that?"

"The girl who wasn't in Mr. Marks' office?"

"Yes. Who was missing of that bunch of berry raiders?" and Neale grinned.

"Why – Trix," said Agnes, slowly.

"Ah-ha! I smell a mouse!"

"What do you mean by that, Neale O'Neil?" cried the girl.

"Nothing significant in the fact that our festive Beatrice was not there?"

"No. Why should there be?" demanded Agnes.

"And who do you suppose furnished Mr. Marks with his information and the list of you girls' names?"

"Oh, the farmer!"

"Old Buckham?" cried Neale, startled.

"Yes," said Agnes. "Mr. Marks said so."

Neale looked both surprised and doubtful. "Then why didn't Buckham give in Trix's name, too?"

"Oh, I don't know, Neale. No use in blaming her just because she was lucky enough to escape."

"Oh, that's all right. I'll go to my Lady Beatrice, get down on my shin-bones, and beg her pardon, if I wrongfully suspect her," laughed Neale. "But, I say, Aggie! did Mr. Buckham come to see Mr. Marks about it? Did he say?"

"No. I think Mr. Marks said the farmer wrote."

"Wrote?" cried the boy. "Why, I don't believe Bob Buckham can write. He's a smart enough old fellow, but he never had any schooling. He told me so. He's not a bad sort, either. He must have been awfully mad about those strawberries to hold a grudge so long as this. I worked for him a while, you know, Aggie."

"Oh, so you did, Neale."

"Yes. I don't believe he is the sort who would make so much trouble for a bunch of girls. Somebody must have egged him on," said Neale, gloomily.

"There you go again, Neale," groaned Agnes. "Hinting at Beatrice Severn."

"Well," grinned Neale, "you want me to help you out of your scrape, don't you?"

"At nobody else's expense," said Agnes.

"Don't know what to make of it," grumbled Neale. "It looks fishy to me. Mr. Buckham writing Mr. Marks! I'm going to find out about that. Keep up your pluck, Aggie. I'll see what can be done," and Neale, with his cap on the back of his flaxen head and his hands in his pockets, went off whistling.

CHAPTER VII

THE CORE OF THE APPLE

Dot Kenway came home a day or two after this, quite full of her first "easy lessons in physiology." It always seemed to Dot that when she learned a new fact it was the very first time it had ever been learned by anybody.

"Dot is just like a hen," Neale O'Neil said, chuckling. "She gets hold of a thing and you'd think nobody ever knew it before she did. She is the original discoverer of every fact that gets into her little noddle."

"But how does that make her like a hen?" demanded Ruth.

"Why, a hen lays an egg, and then gets so excited about it and makes such a racket, that you'd think that was the first egg that had been laid since the world began."

"What is all this you learned, Dottie?" demanded Neale, as they all sat around the study lamp; for Neale was often at the old Corner House with his books in the evening. He and Agnes were in the same grade.

"Oh, Neale! did you know you had a spinal cord?" demanded the smallest Corner House girl.

"No! you don't tell me? Where is it?" asked the boy, quite soberly.

"Why," explained the literal Dot, "it's a string that runs from the back of your head to the bottom of your heels."

At the shout of laughter that welcomed this intelligence, Tess said, comfortingly:

"Don't mind, Dot. That isn't half as bad as what Sammy Pinkney said to Miss Pepperill the other day. She asked us which was the most important to keep clean, your face or your teeth, and Sammy shouted: 'Your teeth, teacher, 'cause they can rot off and your face can't.'"

"And I guess that awful Miss Pepperpot punished him for that," suggested Dot, awed.

"Yes. Sammy is always getting punished," said Tess. "He never does manage to say the right thing. And I think Miss Pepperill is kind of hard on him. But – but she's real nice to me."

"Well, why shouldn't she be, honey?" Ruth said. "You're not to be compared with that rude boy, I am sure," for Ruth Kenway did not much approve of boys, and only tolerated Neale O'Neil because the other children liked him so much.

"I should hope not!" agreed Agnes, who did like boys, but did not like the aforesaid scapegrace, Sammy Pinkney.

"I guess it was the sovereigns of England that makes her nice to me," said Tess, thoughtfully. "I 'spected to have an awfully hard time in Miss Pepperill's class; but she has never been real cross with me. And what do you s'pose?"

"I couldn't guess," Ruth said smilingly.

"To-day she asked me about Mrs. Eland."

"Mrs. Eland?"

"Yes," said Tess, nodding. "She asked me if I'd seen Mrs. Eland lately, and if she'd found her sister. For you see," explained Tess, "I'd told her how poor Mrs. Eland felt so bad about losing her sister when she was a little girl and never being able to find her."

"Oh, yes, I remember," Ruth said.

"But I had to tell Miss Pepperill that I'd only seen her the one time – when she taught me the sovereigns of England. I'd really love to see Mrs. Eland once more. Wouldn't you, Dot?"

"Dear me, yes!" agreed the smaller girl. "I wonder if she ever got those apples?"

"Of course she did," put in Neale. "Didn't I tell you I took them to the hospital myself?"

"We – ell! But she never told us so – did she, Dot?" complained Tess.

However, the very next day the children heard from the bag of apples. A delightfully suspicious package awaited Tess and Dot at the old Corner House after school. It had been delivered by no less a person than Dr. Forsyth himself, who stopped his electric runabout in front of the old Corner House long enough to run in and set the pasteboard box on the sitting room table.

"What forever is that, Doctor?" demanded Mrs. MacCall.

"I hope it's something to make these children sick," declared the doctor, gruffly. "They are too disgracefully healthy for anything."

"Yes, thank our stars!" said the housekeeper.

"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" cried the apparently very savage medical man. "But what would become of all us poor doctors if everybody were as healthy as this family, I'd like to know?" and he tramped out to his car again in much make-believe wrath.

Dot came first from school and was shown the box. It was only about six inches square and it had a card tied to it addressed to both her and Tess. Dot eyed it with the roundest of round eyes, when she heard who had brought it.

"Why don't you open it, child?" demanded Aunt Sarah, who chanced to be downstairs. "Bring it here and I'll snip the string for you with my scissors."

"Oh! I couldn't, Aunt Sarah!" Dot declared.

"Why not, I should admire to know?" snapped the old lady. "It's not too heavy for you to carry, I should hope?"

"Oh, no, ma'am. But I can't open it till Tess comes," said Dot.

"Why not, I should admire to know?" repeated Aunt Sarah, in her jerky way.

"Why, it wouldn't be fair," said the smallest Corner House girl, gravely.

"Huh!" snorted the old lady.

"Tess wouldn't do that to me," Dot said, with assurance.

Agnes chanced to get home next. "What ever do you s'pose is in it, Dottums?" she cried. "There's no name on it except yours and Tess'. And the doctor brought it!"

"Yes. But I know it isn't pills," declared Dot, seriously.

"How do you know that?" laughed Agnes.

"The box is too big," was the prompt reply. "He brings pills in just the cunningest little boxes."

"Maybe it's charlotte russe," suggested Agnes. "They put them in boxes like this at the bakery."

"Oh! do you think so?" gasped Dot, scarcely able to contain herself.

"If they are charlotte rushings," chuckled Neale, who had brought home Agnes' books for her, "be careful and not be so piggish as the country boy who ate the pasteboard containers as well as the cake and cream of the charlotte russe. He said he liked them fine, only the crust was tough."

"Mercy!" ejaculated Agnes. "That's like a boy."

"I do hope Tess comes pretty quick!" murmured Dot. "I – I'm just about going crazy!"

Tess came finally; but at first she was so excited by something that had happened in school that she could not listen to Dot's pleading that she should "come and look at the box."

Of course, Sammy Pinkney was in difficulties with the teacher again. And Tess could not see for once why he should be punished.

"I'm sure," she said earnestly, "Sammy did his best. And I brought the composition he wrote home for you to see, Ruthie. Sammy dropped it out of his book and I will give it to him to-morrow.

"But Miss Pepperill acted just like she thought Sammy had misbehaved himself. She said she hoped she hadn't a 'humorist in embryo' in her class. What did she mean by that, Ruthie? What's a humorist in embryo!"

"A sprouting funny man," said Agnes, laughing. "Maybe Sammy Pinkney will grow up to write for the funny columns in the newspapers."

"Let us see the paper, Tess," said Ruth. "Maybe that will explain just what Miss Pepperill meant."

"And poor Sammy's got to stay after school for a week," said Tess, sympathetically, producing a much smudged and wrinkled sheet of composition paper.

"Do come and see the box!" wailed Dot.

Tess went with her smaller sister then, leaving Ruth to read aloud for the delight of the rest of the family Sammy Pinkney's composition on

"THE DUCK

"The duck is a low heavyset bird he is a mighty poor singer having a coarse voice like crows only worse caused by getting to many frogs in his neck. He is parshal to water and aks like hed swallowed a toy balloon that keeps him from sinking the best he can do is to sink his head straight down but his tail fethers is always above water. Duks has only two legs and they is set so far back on his running gears by Nachur that they come pretty near missin' his body altogether. Some ducks when they get big curls on their tails is called drakes and don't have to set or hatch but just loaf and go swimming and eat ev'rything in sight so if I had to be a duck I'd ruther be a drake. There toes are set close together the web skin puts them in a poor way of scratching but they have a wide bill for a spade and they walk like they was tipsy. They bounce and bump from side to side and if you scare them they flap there wings and try to make a pass at singing which is pore work. That is all about ducks."

"Do you suppose," cried Agnes in wonder, "that that boy doesn't know any better than that composition sounds?"

"Evidently Miss Pepperill thinks he does," laughed Ruth. "But it is funny. I wonder what will happen to Sammy Pinkney when he grows up?"

"The question is, what will happen to him before he grows up," chuckled Neale. "That kid is a public nuisance. I don't know but that the dog-catchers will get him yet."

Meanwhile the two little girls had secured the paper box and opened it. Their squeals drew all the others to the sitting room. Inside the neatly wrapped box was a round object in silver and gold foil, and when this was carefully unwound, a big, splendid golden pippin lay on the table.

"Why!" cried Dot, "it's one of our own apples."

"It is surely off our pippin tree," agreed Agnes.

"Who could have sent it?" Tess surmised. "And Dr. Forsyth brought it."

"Bringing coals to Newcastle," chuckled Neale.

But when Tess took up the apple, it broke in half. It had been cunningly cut through and through, and then the core scooped out, and the halves of the apple fastened together again.

"Oo-ee!" squealed Dot again.

For in the core of the apple was a wad of paper, and Tess spread this out on the table. It was a note and the reading of it delighted the two smaller girls immensely:

"My dear Lesser Half of the Corner House Quartette," it began. "Your kindness in sending me the nice bag of apples has not been overlooked. I wanted to come and see you, and thank you in person; but my duties at present will not allow me to do so. We are short-handed here at the Women's and Children's Hospital and I can not spare the time for even an afternoon call.

"I would, however, dearly love to have you little girls, Theresa and Dorothy, both come to call on me, and take tea, some afternoon – the time to be set by your elder sister, Miss Ruth. Ask her to write to me when you may come – on your way home from school, if you like.

"Hoping I shall have the pleasure of entertaining you soon, I am,

"Your loving and sincere friend,Marion Eland."

"I think that is just too sweet for anything of her," sighed Tess, ecstatically. "To call and take tea with her! Won't that be fine, Dot?"

"Fine!" echoed Dot. She bit tentatively into her half of the apple which had contained the invitation. "This – this apple isn't hurt a mite, Tess," she added and immediately proceeded to eat it.

CHAPTER VIII

LYCURGUS BILLET'S EAGLE BAIT

Ruth set the day – and an early one – for Tess and Dot to take tea with their new friend, Mrs. Eland. She wrote a very nice note in reply to that found in the core of the apple, and the little girls looked forward with delight to seeing the matron of the Woman's and Children's Hospital.

But before the afternoon in question arrived something occurred in which all the Corner House girls had a part, and Neale O'Neil as well; and it was an adventure not soon to be forgotten by any of them. Incidentally, Tom Jonah was in it too.

Ruth tried, on pleasant Saturdays, to invent some game or play that all could have a part in. This kept the four sisters together, and it was seldom that any Corner House girl found real pleasure away from the others. Ruth's only cross was that Agnes would drag Neale O'Neil into their good times.

Not that Ruth had anything against the white-haired boy. In spite of the fact that Neale was brought up in a circus – his uncle was Mr. Bill Sorber of Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie – he was quite the nicest boy the Corner House girls knew. But Ruth did not approve of boys at all; and she thought Agnes rude and slangy enough at times without having her so much in the company of a real boy like Neale.

She suggested a drive into the country for this late September Saturday, chestnuts being their main object, there having been a sharp frost. Of course Neale had to arrange for the hiring of the livery team, and the stableman refused to let them have a spirited span of horses unless Neale drove.

"Well, get an automobile then!" exclaimed Agnes. "It's only three dollars an hour, with a man to drive, at Acton's garage. Goodness knows I'm just crazy to ride in an auto – one of those big, beautiful seven-passenger touring cars. I wish we could have one, Ruthie!"

"I wish we could," said Ruth, for she, too, was automobile hungry like the rest of the world.

"Do! do! ask Mr. Howbridge," begged Agnes.

"Not for the world," returned Ruth, decidedly. "He'd think we were crazy, indeed. There is money enough to educate us, and clothe and feed us; but I do not believe that Uncle Peter's estate will stand the drain of automobiles – no indeed!"

"Well," sighed Agnes. "We're lucky to have Neale about. You know very well if it were not for him the livery man would give us a pair of dead-and-alive old things. Mr. Skinner knows Neale is to be trusted with any horse in his stable."

This was true enough; but it added Neale O'Neil to the party. When they were about to depart from the old Corner House there was another unexpected member added to the company.

Tess and Dot were squeezed in beside Neale on the front seat. Ruth and Agnes occupied the back of the carriage with wraps and boxes and baskets of eatables. This was to be an all day outing with a picnic dinner in the chestnut woods.

"All aboard?" queried Neale, flourishing the whip. "Got everything? Haven't left anything good to eat behind, have you?"

"Oh, you boys!" groaned Ruth. "Always thinking of your stomachs."

"Well! why were stomachs put in front of us, if not to be thought of and considered?" Neale demanded. "If not, they might as well have been stuck on behind like a knapsack, or like our shoulder-blades.

"I say, Mrs. MacCall," proceeded the irrepressible boy. "Plenty of baked beans and fishcakes for supper to-night. I see very plainly that these girls have brought very little to eat along of a solid character. I shall be hungry when we get back."

At that moment Tess cried: "Oh, poor Tom Jonah!" And Dot echoed her: "Poor Tom Jonah!"

"Look how eager he is!" cried Agnes.