The Corner House Girls on a Tour

“We had an idea of doing so when we started, ma’am,” said Agnes, quickly.

“I should have gone there to-day, too – ”

“Not with that pony?” shrieked Agnes, clasping her hands.

“Why – no,” said the lady, smiling. “But if my nephew hadn’t lost his automobile he would have taken me. Oh, dear! Now I shall have to ride behind Jonas all the time.”

“You really don’t call this riding, do you, ma’am?” asked the irrepressible Agnes.

The woman laughed. She liked Agnes Kenway from the first, as almost everybody who met her did.

“I’m not riding fast just now, and that’s a fact,” she said, nodding her bonnet with its many bows. “Nor does Jonas take me over the roads very rapidly at his very best pace.”

Neale O’Neil had got slowly out of the car and now walked around to the head of the fat brown pony. The pony had blue eyes, and they were very mild. But he seemed to have no idea of going on and getting himself and his mistress out of the way of the automobile. Maybe he did not like automobiles.

“You see, my nephew bought a car and we let Jonas kick up his heels in the paddock. Oh! he’s lively enough when he wants to be – Jonas, I mean. But my nephew’s car was stolen day before yesterday – and he’s worried almost to death about it, poor man.”

“Oh!” cried Ruth, “who is your nephew, Madam?”

“Why, Philip Collinger is my nephew. He’s the county surveyor, you know. A very bright young man – if I do say it. But not bright enough to keep from having his auto stolen,” she added, ruefully.

Just then Agnes, who had been watching Neale O’Neil, called:

“What are you doing to that pony, Neale?”

The boy had rubbed the fat brown pony’s nose. He had lifted first one foot and then the other, going all around the pony to do so. He had patted his neck. Jonas had seemed rather to like these attentions. He still whisked flies calmly.

Now Neale reached over and took one of the pony’s ears in his hand, holding it firmly. To the other ear the boy put his lips and seemed to be whispering something privately to Jonas.

“What are you doing to that pony, Neale?” cried Agnes again.

“Mercy! what is the boy doing? Why, Jonas doesn’t pay any attention to me when I fairly yell at him. He’s deaf, I believe.”

And then the lady stopped, startled. The four Corner House girls all expressed their amazement with a united cry. Neale had taken the pony firmly by the bridle and was leading him quietly out of the middle of the road.

“For pity’s sake!” gasped the pony’s mistress, “I never saw the like of that before.”

Jonas seemed to have forgotten all about balking. He still wagged his ears to keep the flies away and whisked his tail industriously.

Neale, leading the pony, turned a corner in the lane, and there came upon a house. The lady had left the phaeton to speak to the girls more companionably. Neale tied the pony to the picket fence before the house, leaving the hitching strap long enough to allow the animal to graze.

“Well, I want to know!” cried the woman, when the boy returned to the car. “How did you do that? What did you do to Jonas to make him change his mind?”

“This is Mrs. Heard, Neale,” said Ruth, smiling. “You sometimes do prove to be a smart boy. What did you do to him?”

Neale grinned broadly. He had been used to horses all his life and he knew a few tricks of the Gypsies and the horse-traders.

“I just told him something,” the boy said.

“Oo-ee!” cried Tess. “Did you really whisper to him?”

Neale nodded.

“What did you whisper to the pony?” asked Dot, wide-eyed.

Agnes snapped, thinking Neale was fooling her: “I don’t believe it!”

“Yes, I whispered to him,” said the boy, seriously.

“Oh, Neale!” remonstrated Ruth.

“Well! For all I ever heard!” exclaimed Mrs. Heard. “What did you whisper to that vexatious brute of a pony?”

“If I told what it was, that would spoil the charm,” said Neale, gravely.

“Nonsense!” ejaculated Agnes, flushing.

“Now you know that is ridiculous,” said Ruth, inclined to be exasperated with the boy as much as she had been with the pony.

“No. It is a fact,” said the boy, decidedly.

“Now, you know that isn’t so, Neale O’Neil!” cried Agnes.

“I assure you it is. Anyway, they say if you tell it – what you say – to anybody else, the horse will balk again right away. It’s a secret between him and the person – ”

“I never heard such a ridiculous thing in all my life,” gasped Mrs. Heard.

“I think you are not very polite, Neale,” said Ruth, quite sternly.

“Now see here!” cried the badgered boy, getting rather vexed himself. “I tell you I can’t tell you – ”

“You’re talking anything but English,” complained Agnes.

“Well, maybe I didn’t talk English into the pony’s ear,” retorted Neale, grinning suddenly again. “Anyway, the old Gyp who taught me that trick told me I must never say the words aloud, or to anybody who would not make proper use of the magic formula.”

“Oh, shucks!” exclaimed Agnes, in disgust. “Tell me. I’ll try it on Billy Bumps when he balks,” said Tess, in a small voice.

At that they all laughed and Neale got in behind the steering wheel again. The two older girls were much interested in Mrs. Heard and that woman was evidently pleased with the sisters.

“Why, yes; I ought to know you Corner House girls. Goodness knows I’ve heard enough about you – and my name being Heard, I heard a lot!” and she laughed. “But you see, I live away on this side of town, and don’t go to your church; so we have never met before.”

“I am sure the loss has been ours,” said Ruth, politely. “I hope your pony will not balk again to-day.”

“Goodness knows! He’ll balk if he takes a notion to. I don’t suppose what you whispered to him is guaranteed to be a permanent cure, is it, boy?” she asked Neale O’Neil.

“No, ma’am,” grinned the boy.

“And you expected to go to Marchenell Grove to-day, Mrs. Heard?” Ruth said, reflectively, looking at Agnes enquiringly although she spoke to the mistress of the fat brown pony.

“I had thought to. Philly Collinger was going to take me. But if he doesn’t recover his car he’ll not take me auto riding very soon again.”

“Well,” said Ruth, having received a nod of acquiescence from Agnes, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t go there to-day just the same. Won’t you come with us? There’s room in the car.”

“Goody! Of course she can!” cried Agnes, clapping her hands.

“I think that would be real nice,” agreed Tess.

Dot moved over at once to make room. “She can sit beside me and the Alice-doll,” she proclaimed.

“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Mrs. Heard, her face alight with pleasure at this united invitation. “You are just the nicest girls I ever met. I wonder if I’d better?”

“Of course,” said Ruth. “You can find some place to leave the pony. Or Neale can, I’m sure.”

“Why, I know these people right in the very next house,” said Mrs. Heard. “Indeed I expected to call there if Jonas ever got that far.”

Neale got briskly out of the car again. “I’ll go and unharness him,” he said, cheerfully. “You just find out where I shall put him. He’d rather have you ride in an automobile than drag you himself,” and he laughed.

“Did – did he tell you so, Neale, when you were talking with him?” asked Dot, in amazement.

Then they all laughed.

CHAPTER III – WHAT MRS. HEARD TOLD

In ten minutes the Kenway car was moving again. Jonas had been put up at the barn of Mrs. Heard’s friends, near which the pony had balked, and Neale soon whisked them out of sight of the place.

“This – this is just delightful,” sighed Mrs. Heard. “Especially after sitting behind that brute of a pony. I do love an automobile.”

“So do I!” Agnes cried. “I’d rather ride in this car than in a golden chariot – I know I would.”

“I don’t know how they run chariots, nowadays,” said Neale, chuckling; “whether by horse-power or gas. But sometimes a car balks, you know.”

“Not so often as that Jonas,” declared Mrs. Heard. “I’ve been out with my nephew a lot. His is a nice car. I hope he’ll find it.”

“Why, of course the thieves will be apprehended,” said Ruth. “What good are the police?”

“When it comes to autos,” said Neale, slyly, “the police are mostly good for stopping you and getting you fined.”

“Well, don’t you dare drive too fast and get us fined, Neale O’Neil,” ordered Ruth, sternly.

“No, ma’am,” he returned. But Agnes whispered in his ear:

“I don’t care how fast you run it, Neale. I love to go fast.”

“You’ll be a speed fiend, Aggie,” he declared. “That’s what you’ll be.”

“Oh! I want to drive. I must learn.”

“You’ll have to ask Mr. Howbridge about that,” Neale told her.

“Oh!”

“Yes, ma’am! He told me that I shouldn’t allow anybody to run the car but a properly qualified person.”

“You don’t mean it?” gasped the eager girl.

“That’s right! A person with a license.”

“I can’t believe it, Neale O’Neil!” wailed Agnes. “How am I ever going to learn, then?”

“You’ll have to go to the garage as I did and take lessons.”

Agnes pouted over this. Mrs. Heard, meanwhile, was saying to Ruth:

“Yes, the stealing of my nephew’s auto was an outrage. Politics in this county are most disgraceful. If we women voted – ”

“But, Mrs. Heard! what have politics to do with your nephew’s auto being stolen?” cried Ruth.

“Oh! it wasn’t any ordinary thief, or perhaps thieves, who took his car. He is sure of that. You see, there are some politicians who want the plans and maps of the new road surveys his office has been making.”

“What sort of maps are those?” asked Tess, who was listening. “Like those we have to outline in the geography?”

“They are not like those, chicken,” laughed Ruth. “They are outlines – drawings. They show the road levels and grades. I guess you don’t understand. Don’t you remember those men who came the other day and looked through instruments on our sidewalk and measured with a long tape line, and all that?”

“Oh, yes,” confessed Tess. “I saw them.”

“Well, they were surveyors. And they were working for Mr. Collinger, I suppose,” said Ruth.

“Oh!”

“I saw them, too,” proclaimed Dot. “I thought they were photo – photographers. I went out there and stood with my Alice-doll right in front of one of those things on the three sticks.”

“You did?” cried Agnes, who heard this. “What for, Dottums?”

“To get our picture tooken,” said Dot, gravely. “And then I asked the man when it would be done and if we could see a picture.”

“Ho, ho!” laughed Neale O’Neil. “What did he say?”

“Why,” confessed the smallest Corner House girl, indignantly, “he said I’d be grown up – and so would Alice – before that picture was enveloped – ”

“‘Developed’!” cried Tess.

“No. Enveloped,” said Dot, stoutly. “You always get photograph proofs in an envelope.”

Ruth and Mrs. Heard were laughing heartily. Agnes said, admiringly:

“You’re a wonder, Dot! If there is a possible way of fumbling a thing, you do it.”

The little girls were not likely to understand all that Mrs. Heard said about the disappearance of Mr. Collinger’s automobile – no more than Dot understood about the surveyor’s transit. But they listened.

“You understand, Miss Ruth,” said the aunt of the county surveyor, “that Phil Collinger is responsible for all those tracings and maps that are being made in this road survey.

“If it gets out just what changes are to be made in grades and routes through the county before the commission renders its report, there is a chance for some of these ‘pauper politicians,’ as Philly calls them, to make money.”

“I don’t see how,” said Agnes, putting her oar in. “What good would the maps do even dishonest people?”

“Because with foreknowledge of the highway commission’s determinations, men could go and get options upon property adjoining the highways that will be changed, and either sell to the county at a big profit or hold abutting properties for the natural rise in land values that will follow.”

“I understand what an option is,” said Ruth. “It is a small sum which a man pays down on a place, with the privilege of buying it at a stated price within a given length of time.”

“You talk just like a judge, Ruthie,” giggled Agnes. “For my part I don’t understand it at all. But I’m sorry Mr. Collinger lost his car.”

“And it was stolen so boldly,” said Neale, shaking his head.

“But why did they steal the car, Mrs. Heard?” demanded Ruth, sticking to the main theme. “What has that to do with the surveyors’ maps?”

“Why,” said the lady, slowly, “they must have seen Philly come out of the court house and throw a package into the car. He covered it with a robe. They knew – or supposed they knew – that he carried the maps around with him. He could not even trust the safe in his office. It’s no better than a tin can and could be opened with a hammer and chisel.”

“Oh, my!” exclaimed Agnes, interested again. “So they stole the car to get the maps? Just like a moving picture play, isn’t it?”

“Maybe it is,” sighed the lady. “But it is quite serious for Philly – whether they got the maps or not.”

“Oh! Didn’t they?” cried Ruth.

“That – that he won’t say,” said Mrs. Heard, shaking her head. “I’m sure I don’t know. Philly Collinger can be just as close-mouthed as an oyster – and so I tell him.

“But everybody thinks the maps were in that package he put in the car before he ran across the street to get a bite of lunch. And I’m pretty sure that he isn’t worried all that much over the stealing of his car. Though goodness knows when he can ever afford to buy another. The salary of surveyor in this county isn’t a fortune.

“So, there it is,” said Mrs. Heard. “The car’s gone, and I guess the maps and data are gone with it. Somebody, of course, hired the two scamps that took it to do the trick – ”

“Oh, were there two?” asked Neale, who had been running the car slowly again in order to listen.

“Yes. They were seen; but nobody supposed they were stealing the car, of course.”

“What kind of men were they? How did they look?” asked Agnes.

“What do you want to know for, Miss Detective?” chuckled Neale.

“So as to be on the watch for them. If I see one of them about our car, I shall make a disturbance,” announced the beauty, with decision.

“I don’t know much about them,” admitted Mrs. Heard, laughing with the others over Agnes’ statement. “But one was a young man with a fancy band on his straw hat and yellow freckles on his face. I believe he had a little mustache. But he might shave that,” she added, reflectively.

“And change the band on his hat,” whispered Neale to Agnes, his eyes dancing.

“Never mind about his hat-band, Neale O’Neil!” cried Agnes, standing up suddenly in a most disconcerting way. “What is that ahead?”

Neale promptly shut off the power and braked. Agnes was greatly excited, and she pointed to a place in the road not many yards in advance.

The way was narrow, with rocky fields on either side approached by rather steep banks. Indeed, the road lay through what might well be called a ravine. It was the worst piece of road, too (so the guidebook, said), of any stretch between Milton and Marchenell Grove.

As the car stopped, Neale saw what Agnes had seen. Right across the way – directly in front of the automobile – lay something long and iridescent. It was moving.

“Oh!” shrieked Agnes again. “It’s a snake – a horrid, great, big snake!”

“Well, what under the sun did you make me stop for?” demanded the boy. “I’d have gone right over it.”

“That would have been cruel, boy,” declared Mrs. Heard, from behind.

“Cruel? Huh! It’s a rattler,” returned Neale.

“Oh, Neale! It’s never!” gasped Agnes, not meaning to be impolite.

“A rattler, Neale?” asked Ruth. “Are you sure?”

“What’s a rattler?” asked Dot, composedly. “Is it what they make baby’s rattles out of?”

“Mercy, no!” shivered Tess. “Neale means it’s a rattlesnake.”

“Oh! I don’t like them,” declared Dot, immediately picking up the Alice-doll, of which she always first thought in time of peril.

“What shall we do?” demanded Ruth.

“Can’t he drive around it?” asked Mrs. Heard, rather excitedly. “I don’t believe at all in hurting any dumb animal – not even a snake or a spider.”

“How about breaking the whip on old Jonas?” whispered Neale to Agnes.

But his girl friend was all of a shiver. “Do get around it, Neale,” she begged.

“Can’t. The road’s too narrow,” declared the boy, with promptness. “And I am bound to run over the thing if it doesn’t move out of the way. I can’t help it.”

“Wait!” cried Mrs. Heard. “Get out and poke it with a stick.”

“Why, Mrs. Heard!” exclaimed Ruth, “do you realize that a rattlesnake is deadly poison? I wouldn’t let Neale do such a thing.”

“Besides being a suffragist,” declared Mrs. Heard, firmly, “I am a professing and acting member of the S.P.C.A. I cannot look on and see a harmless beast – it is not doing anything to us – wantonly killed or injured.”

“Good-night!” murmured Neale.

Just then the snake – and it was a big fellow, all of six feet long – seemed to awaken. Perhaps it had been chilled by the coolness of the night before; it was lethargic, at any rate.

It lifted its head, whirled into the very middle of the road, and faced the automobile defiantly. In a moment it had coiled and sprung its rattle. The whirring sound, once heard, is never to be mistaken for any other.

“Oh, dear! what shall we do?” gasped Agnes. “If you try to run over it, it may get into the car – or something,” said Ruth.

The roadway was narrower here than it had been back where the brown pony had held the party up. This first trip in their automobile seemed to be fraught with much adventure for the Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil.

CHAPTER IV – SALERATUS JOE

Neale O’Neil knew very well that he could not satisfy everybody – least of all the rattlesnake.

Mrs. Heard did not want her S.P.C.A. sensibilities hurt; Agnes wanted him to drive on; Ruth wished him to dodge the coiled rattler. As for getting out and “coaxing it to move on” with a stick, Neale had no such intention.

He tried starting slowly to see if the serpent would be frightened and open the way for the passage of the car. But the rattler instantly coiled and sprang twice at the hood. The second time it sank its fangs into the left front tire.

“Cricky!” gasped Neale. “They say you swell all up when one of those things injects poison into you; but I don’t believe that tire will swell any more than it is.”

“Don’t make fun!” groaned Agnes. “Suppose it should jump into the car?”

“If we only had a gun,” began Neale.

“Well, I hope you haven’t, young man,” cried Mrs. Heard. “I’m deadly afraid of firearms.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A snake,” declared Neale, grinning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do be careful, Neale!” squealed Agnes.

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

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

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

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