The Corner House Girls in a Play

The big dog stood at the gate. Old as he was, the idea of an outing pleased him immensely. He was always delighted to go picnicking with the Corner House girls; but as the legend on his collar proclaimed, Tom Jonah was a gentleman, and nobody had invited him to go on this occasion.

"Oh, Ruth! let him come!" cried the three younger girls in chorus.

"Why not?" added Agnes.

"Well, I don't know," said Ruth.

"It will be a long march for him," said Neale, doubtfully. "He'll get left behind. The horses are fast."

"Well, you are the one to see that he isn't left behind, Neale O'Neil," asserted Ruth.

"All right," said the boy, meekly, but winking at Uncle Rufus and Mrs. MacCall. Neale had wanted the old dog to go all the time, and his remark had turned the scale in Tom Jonah's favor.

"Come, boy! you can go, too," Ruth announced as the horses started.

Tom Jonah uttered a joyful bark, circled the carriage and pair two or three times in the exuberance of his delight, and then settled down to a steady pace under the rear axle. Neale saw to it that the lively ponies did not travel too fast for the old dog.

The carriage rattled across Main Street and out High Street. The town was soon left behind, Neale following the automobile road along which ran the interurban electric tracks to Fleeting and beyond.

"Oh, yes!" said Agnes, gloomily. "I know this is the way to Fleeting, Neale O'Neil. Wish I'd never been there."

"Has Mr. Marks ever said anything further to you girls about Bob Buckham's strawberries?" asked her boy friend.

"No. But you see, we haven't played any more outside games, either. And I know they'll give The Carnation Countess this winter and we won't any of us be allowed to play in it."

"I'm going to be a bee," announced Dot, seriously, "if they have the play. I'll have wings and a buzzer."

"A buzzer?" demanded Tess. "What's that?"

"Well, bees buzz, don't they? If they make bees out of us, as teacher says they will, we'll have to buzz, won't we? We're learning a buzzing song now."

"Goodness! and you'll be provided with a stinger, too, I suppose!" exclaimed Agnes.

"Oh! we shall be tame bees," Dot said. "Not at all wild. The song says so.

"'We are little honey-bees,Honey sweet our disposition.We appear here now to please,Making sweets our avocation.Buzz! buzz! buzz-z-z-z!'

That's a verse," concluded Dot.

"Miss Pepperill," observed Tess, sadly, "said only yesterday that if we were in the play at all we might act the part of imps better than anything else. It would come natural to us."

"Poor Miss Pepperpot!" laughed Agnes. "She must find your class a great cross, Tess. How's Sammy standing just now?"

"He hasn't done anything to get her very mad since he wrote about the duck," Tess said gravely. "But Sadie Goronofsky got a black mark yesterday. And Miss Pepperill laughed, too."

"What for?" asked Ruth.

"Why, teacher asked why Belle Littleweed hadn't been at school for two days and Alfredia Blossom told her she guessed Belle's father was dead. He was 'spected to die, you know."

"Well, what about Sadie?" asked Agnes, for Tess seemed to have lost the thread of her story.

"Why, Sadie speaks up and says: 'Teacher, I don't believe Mr. Littleweed is dead at all. I see their clothes on the line and they was all white – nightgowns and all.'"

"The idea!" giggled Agnes.

"That's what Miss Pepperill said. She asked Sadie if she thought folks wore black nightgowns when they went into mourning, and Sadie says: 'Why not, teacher? Don't they feel just as bad at night as they do in the daytime?' So then Miss Pepperill said Sadie ought not to ask such silly questions, and she gave her a black mark. But I saw her laughing behind her spectacles!"

"My! but Tess is the observant kid," said Neale, laughing. "She laughed behind her spectacles, did she?"

"Yes. I know when she laughs, no matter how cross her voice sounds," declared Tess, confidently. "If you look right through her spectacles you'll see her eyes jumping. But I guess she's afraid to let us all see that she feels pleasant."

"She's afraid to spoil her discipline, I suppose," said Ruth. "But if ever I teach school I hope I can govern my scholars by making them love me – not through fear."

"Why, of course they'll all fall in love with you, Ruthie!" cried Agnes, with assurance. "Who wouldn't? But that old Pepperpot is another proposition."

"Perhaps she is a whole lot better than she appears," Ruth said mildly. "And I don't think we ought to call her 'Pepperpot.' Tess certainly has found her blind side."

"Ah, of course! Tess is like you," rejoined Agnes. "She would disarm a wild tiger."

"Oh! oh!" cried Neale, hearing this remark – and certainly what Agnes said was wilder than any tiger! "How would you go to work to disarm a tiger, Aggie? Never knew they had arms."

"Oh, Mr. Smartie!"

"I don't know how smart I am," said Neale. "I was setting here thinking – "

"You mean you were sitting," snapped Agnes. "You're neither a hen nor a mason."

"Huh! who said I was?" asked Neale.

"Why," returned the girl, "a hen sets on eggs, and a mason sets the stone in a wall, for instance. You sit on that seat, I should hope."

"Oh, cricky! Get ap, Dobbin and Dewlap! What do you know about Aggie's turning critic all of a sudden?" cried Neale.

"Alas for our learning!" chuckled Ruth. "A hen sets only in colloquial language. To a purist she always sits– according to my English lesson of yesterday.

"But you'd better see where you are turning to, young man," she went on, briskly. "Isn't yonder the road to Lycurgus Billet's place? He owns the chestnut woods."

"We can go that way if you like," admitted Neale. "But I want to come around by the Ipswitch Curve on the interurban, either going or coming."

"What for?" asked Ruth, while Agnes cried:

"Oh, don't Neale! I never want to see that horrid place again."

"I just want to," said Neale to Ruth. "Mr. Bob Buckham lives near there and I worked for him once."

Until Neale's uncle, Mr. William Sorber, had undertaken to pay for the boy's education, Neale had earned his own living after he had run away from the circus.

"Oh, don't, Neale!" begged Agnes, faintly.

"Why shouldn't we drive back that way?" asked Ruth, surprised at her sister's manner and words. Ruth did not know all about Agnes' trouble over the raid on the farmer's strawberry patch. "But let's drive direct to the chestnut woods now."

"All right," said Neale, turning the horses. "Go 'lang! We'll have to stop at Billet's house and ask permission. He is choice of his woods, for there's a lot of nice young timber there and the blight has not struck the trees. He's awfully afraid of fire."

"Isn't that Mr. Billet rather an odd stick?" asked Ruth. "You know, we never were up this way but once. We saw him then. He was lying under a wall with his gun, watching for a chicken hawk. His wife said he'd been there all day, since early in the morning. She was chopping wood to heat her water for tea," added Ruth with a sniff.

Neale chuckled. "Lycurgus ought to have been called 'Nimrod,'" he said.

"Why?" demanded Agnes.

"Because he is a mighty hunter. And that is really all he does take any interest in. I bet he'd lie out under a stone wall for a week if he thought he could get a shot at a snowbird! And he'd shoot it, too, if he had half a chance. He never misses, they say."

"Such shiftlessness!" sniffed Ruth again. "And his wife barefooted and his children in rags and tatters."

"That girl was a bright-looking girl," Agnes interposed. "You know – the one with the flour-sack waist on. Oh, Neale!" she added, giggling, "you could read in faint red marking, 'Somebody's XXXX Flour,' right across the small of her back!"

"Poor child," sighed Ruth. "That was Sue – wasn't that her name? Sue Billet."

"A scrawny little one with a tip-tilted nose, and running bare-legged, though she must be twelve," said Neale. "I remember her."

"Poor child," Ruth said again.

There were other things to arouse the oldest Corner House girl's sympathy about the Billet premises when the picnicking party arrived there. Two lean hounds first of all charged out from under the house to attack Tom Jonah.

"Oh!" cried Dot. "Stop them! They'll eat poor Tom Jonah up, they are so hungry."

Tess, too, was somewhat disturbed, for the hounds seemed as savage as bears. Tom Jonah, although slow to wrath, knew well how to acquit himself in battle. He snapped once at each of the hounds, and they fled, yelping.

"And serves 'em just right!" declared Agnes. "Oh! here comes Mrs. Lycurgus."

A slatternly woman in a soiled wrapper, men's shoes on her stockingless feet and her black, stringy hair hanging down her back, came from around the corner of the ramshackle, tumble-down house.

"Why – ya'as; I reckon so. You ain't folks that'll build fires in our woodlot an' leave 'em careless like. Lycurgus, he's gone up that a-way hisself. There's a big eagle been seed up there, an' he's a notion he might shoot it. Mebbe there's a pair on 'em. He wants ter git it, powerful. Sue, she's gone with her pap. But I reckon you know the way?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am," said Neale. Then, after he had driven on a few yards, he said to the girls: "Say! wouldn't it be great to catch sight of that eagle?"

"An eagle?" repeated Agnes, in doubt. "Do you suppose there really is an eagle so near to civilization?"

"You don't call Mrs. Lycurgus really civilized?" chuckled Neale. "And the Billets and Bob Buckham are the nearest neighbors for some miles to his eagleship, in all probability."

"I suppose it is lonely up here," admitted Ruth.

"This is a hilly country. There are plenty of wild spots back on the high ground, within a very few miles of this spot, where eagles might nest."

"An eagle's eyrie!" said Agnes, musingly. "And maybe eaglets in it."

"Like Mrs. Severn wears on her hat," said Dot, suddenly breaking in.

"What! Eaglets on her hat?" cried Agnes.

"Eaglets to trim hats with?" chuckled Neale. "That is a new style, for fair."

"Oh, dear me," said Ruth, with a sigh. "The child means aigrets. Though I am sorry if Mrs. Severn is cruel enough to follow such a fashion. That's a different kind of bird, honey."

"Anyway, there will not be young eagles at this time of year, I guess," Neale added.

"How would we ever climb up to an eyrie?" Tess asked. "They are in very inaccessible places."

"As inac – accessible," asked Dot, stumbling over the big word, "as Mrs. MacCall's highest preserve shelf?"

"Quite," laughed Ruth.

The road through which they now drove was really "woodsy." The leaves were changing from green to gold, for the sap was receding into the boles and roots of the trees. The leaves seemed to be putting on their bravest colors as though to flout Jack Frost.

Squirrels darted away, chattering and scolding, as the party advanced. These little fellows seemed to suspect that the woods were to be raided and some of the nuts, which they considered their own lawful plunder, taken away.

The Corner House girls, with their boy friend, did indeed find a goodly store of nuts. They camped in a pretty glade, where there was a spring, and tethered the horses where they could crop some sweet clover. And Neale built a real Gypsy fire, being careful that it should do no damage; and three stout stakes were set up over the blaze, a pot hung from their apex, and the tea made.

And the chestnuts! how they rained down when Neale climbed up the trees and swung himself out upon the branches, shaking them vigorously. The glossy brown nuts came out of their prickly nests in a hurry and were scattered widely on the leaf-carpeted ground.

Sometimes they came down in the burrs – maybe only "peeping" out; and getting them wholly out of the burrs was not so pleasant an occupation.

"Why is it," complained Dot sucking her fingers, stung by the prickly burrs, "that they put such thistles on these chestnuts? It's worse than a rosebush – or a pincushion. Couldn't the nuts grow just as good without such awfully sharp jackets on 'em?"

"Oh, Dot," said Tess, to whom the smallest Corner House girl addressed this speech. "I suspect the burrs are made prickly for a very good reason. You see, the chestnuts are not really ripe until the burrs are broken open by the frost. Then the squirrels can get at them easily."

"Well, I see that," agreed Dot.

"But don't you see, if the little squirrels – the baby ones – could get at the chestnuts before they were ripe, they would all get sick, and have the stomach-ache – most likely be like children, boys 'specially, who eat green apples? You know how sick Sammy Pinkney was that time he got into our yard and stole the green apples."

"Oh, I see," Dot acknowledged. "I s'pose you're right, Tess. But the burrs are dreadful. Seems to me they could have found something to put 'round a chestnut besides just old prickles."

"How'd they do it?" demanded Tess, rather exasperated at her sister's obstinacy. Besides, the "prickles" were stinging her poor fingers, too. "How do you suppose they could keep the little squirrels from eating the chestnuts green, then?"

"We – ell," said Dot, thoughtfully, "they might do like our teacher says poison ought to be kept. She read us about how dangerous it is to have poison around – and I read some in the book about it, too."

"But chestnuts aren't poison!" cried Tess.

"They must be when they are green," declared the smaller girl, confidently, possessing just enough knowledge of her subject to make her positive. "Else the squirrels wouldn't have the stomach-ache. And you say they do."

"I said they might," denied Tess, hastily.

"Well, poison is a very dang'rous thing," went on Dot, pleased to air her knowledge. "It ought to be doctored at once and not allowed to run on – for that's very ser'ous indeed. And we mustn't treat poison rough; it's li'ble to run into blood poison."

"Oh!" gasped Tess, who had not had the benefits of "easy lessons in physiology" when she was in Dot's grade, that being a new study.

"You ought to keep poison," went on Dot, nodding her dark little head vigorously, "in a little room under lock and key in a little bottle and the cork in so it can't get out, and hide the key and have a skeleton on the bottle and not let nobody go there!" and Dot came out, breathless but triumphant, with this complete and efficacious arrangement.

The bigger girls had gathered a great heap of the brown nuts before the picnic dinner was served. Neale had done something beside shake down the nuts. He had stripped off great pieces of bark from the yellow birch trees and cut them into platters and plates on which the food could be served very nicely. Neale was so resourceful, indeed, that Ruth had to acknowledge that boys really were of some account, after all.

When they sat down, Turk-fashion, around the tablecloth which had been spread, the oldest Corner House girl sighed, however: "But mercy! he eats his share. Where do you suppose he puts it all, Aggie?"

"I wouldn't be unladylike enough to inquire," returned the roguish sister, with a toss of her head. "How dreadful you are, Ruth!"

It was a very pleasant picnic. The crisp air was exhilarating; the dry leaves rustled every time the wind breathed on them; and the tinkle of the spring made pleasant music. Squirrels chattered noisily; jays shrieked their alarm; the lazy caw of a crow was heard from a distance.

The tang of balsam was in the air and the fall haze looked blue and mysterious at the end of the aisles made by the rows of tall trees. It was after dinner that a seemingly well-beaten path attracted them, and the whole party, including Tom Jonah, started for a stroll.

The path led them to an opening in the forest where a stake-and-rider fence was all that separated them from a great rolling pasture. In the distance were the craggy hills, where great boulders cropped out and the forest was thin and straggly.

It was a narrow valley that lay before the young explorers. Directly opposite was a crag as barren as a bald head.

"Look at the cloud shadow sailing over the field," said Ruth, contemplatively.

Her remark might have passed without comment had not the shadow, thus mentioned, changed form and darted suddenly to one side.

"Hi!" exclaimed Neale. "That's no cloud shadow."

"Look! look!" squealed Tess. "See the aeroplane!"

A flying machine had been exhibited at Milton only a few weeks before, and the aviator had done some fancy flying over the house-roofs of the town. Little wonder that Tess thought this must be another aeroplane, for the huge bird that swooped earthward cast a shadow quite as large as had the aeroplane she had seen.

"The eagle!" exclaimed Neale. "Oh, look! look!"

The whole party – even Tom Jonah – was transfixed with wonder as they observed a huge bird sail slowly across the valley toward them and finally alight upon a bare branch of a tall, dead pine at the edge of the field. There the eagle poised for a few moments, its wings half spread, "tip-tilting," as Agnes said, till he had struck the right balance. Then he settled more comfortably on his perch, turned his head till his harsh beak and evil eye were aimed over his shoulder, steadily viewing something in the field below him.

The bird did not see the party of spectators at the boundary fence; but they quickly discovered the object which the bird of prey observed.

"There! Oh, look there!" gasped Agnes. "That thing's moving!"

"It's a girl!" murmured Ruth.

"Sue Billet – as sure as you live," muttered Neale. "There's Lycurgus – over behind the fence – he's after the eagle!"

"What a dreadful thing!" exclaimed Ruth, aloud. "Is he using his own child for bait! That's what he's doing! Oh, Neale! Oh, Agnes! He's sent that child out there to attract the eagle's attention," Ruth went on to cry. "What a wicked, wicked thing to do!"

CHAPTER IX

BOB BUCKHAM TAKES A HAND

Ruth's low cry was involuntary. She did not mean to frighten the little Corner House girls; but they saw and understood as well as the older spectators. Tess and Dot clung together and Dot began to whimper.

"Oh, don't cry, Dot! Don't cry!" begged Tess.

"That – that awful aigret!" gasped Dot, getting things mixed again, but quite as much frightened as though she were right. "It will bite that little girl."

"No. We'll set Tom Jonah on him!" exclaimed Tess, bravely.

"Hush!" exclaimed Neale, in a low, tense voice. "Lycurgus is going to shoot it."

"Go right on, Sue!" they heard the hunter say to his little daughter, in a voice scarcely above a whisper, but very penetrating. "Walk right out in that there field. I got my eye on you."

"You keep your eye on that ol' eagle, Pap – never mind watchin' me," was the faint reply of little Sue Billet.

"Don't you have no fear," Lycurgus said in his sharp wheeze. "I'm a-gwine to shoot that fow-el. He's my meat."

The eagle raised his wings slowly; they quivered and he stretched his neck around so that he could glare again at the trembling little girl. It was no wonder Sue was frightened, and stumbled, and fell into a bed of nettles, and then – screamed!

"Drat the young 'un!" exclaimed Lycurgus, just as the eagle made an awkward spring into the air.

But the bird did not fly away; instead it swooped around in a circle, displaying great strength and agility in its motion. It's wings spread all of six feet. They beat the air tremendously, and then the bird sailed low, aiming directly for the child just climbing out of the bed of nettles.

It was plain that Lycurgus had not been quite ready for the eagle's swoop. He had to try for the bird, however. The screaming Sue could not extricate herself from the dangerous situation in which her father had placed her. Lycurgus shouldered his gun and pulled the trigger.

He may have had a reputation for never missing his quarry; but his gun missed that time, for sure! Not a feather flew from the great bird. Its pinions beat the air so terribly that poor little Sue was thrown to the ground once more.

Agnes shrieked. The two smaller girls were awestruck. Neale O'Neil fairly groaned. It seemed as though the child must fall a victim to the eagle's beak and claws.

Its huge wings, beating the air, drowned most other sounds. Lycurgus struggled to slip another shell into his old-fashioned rifle. Somehow the mechanism had fouled.

"Pap! Pap!" screeched the girl at last. "He's goin' to git me!"

At that shrill and awful cry the man flung away his gun and leaped the rail fence into the open field. What he thought he might do with his bare hands against the talons and armed beak of the bird of prey, it would be impossible to say. But whatever fault might be found with Lycurgus Billet, he was no coward.

Bare-handed, hatless, and as white as paper, the man ran toward his little girl. The shadow of the swooping eagle covered them both.

Then it was that Tess Kenway awoke from her trance. She shrieked, suddenly: "Tom! Tom Jonah! Do, do catch it! Tom Jonah! Sic him, boy!"

The growling dog needed no second urging. He flung himself through the fence and dashed across the intervening space. At the moment the eagle dropped with spread talons, the big dog leaped.

Tom Jonah's teeth gained a grip upon the bird's leg. The eagle screamed with pain and rage. Its wings beat the air mightily, and it rose several feet from the ground, carrying Tom Jonah with it!

Lycurgus leaped in and seized Sue. With her clasped close to his chest he ran for the shelter of the woods.

But the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil, with excited cries, followed in the wake of the lumbering eagle. It plowed across the field, rising and falling with alternate strokes of its wings. Tom Jonah seemed in a very precarious situation, indeed.

The old dog had no idea of letting go his hold, however. When once his jaws were clamped upon an enemy, he was there to stay. Tess was wildly excited. Dot was crying frankly. Agnes called encouragement to Tom Jonah. Ruth and Neale were as anxious as the others for the safety of the old dog, but they saved their breath. All ran as hard as they could run after the eagle and Tom Jonah.

For, scream and beat his wings as he might, the bird could not dislodge the dog. Half the time Tom Jonah was on the ground, and when he felt the earth he dragged back and tore at his feathered antagonist with an obstinacy remarkable.

The eagle could not thrash Tom Jonah with his wings to any purpose; nor could he fix his talons in the dog, or spear him with his beak, while they both were in the air. As the huge bird sprang up the dog bounced into the air, too; but only for a moment or two at a time. The bird was growing weaker.

Finally the eagle changed its tactics, and for a moment the two antagonists whirled over and over on the ground. How the feathers flew! In some way the bird's talons found the dog's flesh.

It was then, when reckless Neale was trying to find a stone or club, that a hoarse voice was heard shouting:

"Get away! stand back! I'm going to shoot that critter!"

"Oh!" shrieked Tess Kenway, not at all the timid and mild little girl she usually was. "Oh! don't you dare shoot Tom Jonah!"

There sounded the heavy explosion of a gun. The eagle screamed no more. Its great wings relaxed and it tumbled to the earth. Tom Jonah sprang away from the thrashing bird, which died hard. The man who had shot it strode in from the other side of the field.

It was not Lycurgus Billet. It was an oldish man, with a big, bushy head of hair and whiskers. He carried his smoking gun in the hollow of his arm.

"By cracky! I made a good shot that time, for a fact!" this stranger declared.

But he was not a stranger to, at least, one of the picnic party. Neale O'Neil cried out: "Oh, Mr. Buckham, that was a fine shot! And just in the nick of time."

Agnes almost fell over at this exclamation of her boy friend. She clung to Neale's jacket sleeve, whispering:

"Oh, dear me! Let's not speak to him! Come, Neale! let's run. I – I am so ashamed about those strawberries."

"Step on that furderinest wing, young feller," said the big, old man to Neale. "He's dead – jest as dead as though he'd laid there a year. He's jest a-kickin' like a old rooster with his head off. Don't know he's dead, that's all. Step on that wing; it'll keep him from thrashin' hisself to pieces," added the farmer, as Neale O'Neil obeyed him.