The Corner House Girls on a Tour

“Cricky!” exclaimed Neale, under his breath, and with some admiration, “the kid’s making out a case.”

Tess, the kind-hearted, would make no accusation; but Ruth, despite the boy’s rejoinders, remained firm.

“No,” she said. “He must go home. Is there a railroad station near from which we can send him, Neale? We’ll telephone to his mother. We are a long way from town.”

At that Sammy Pinkney, who prided himself on being “tough” and who was in training for a piratical future, broke down completely.

“Ow! ow! ow!” he howled, digging his grimy fist first into one eye and then into the other. “I don’t wanter! I don’t wanter! I don’t wanter go back. I ain’t got nobody to play with. And ma’ll lick me ’cause I said you’d ‘vited me to go – an’ now Aggie s-s-says she didn’t. And I been sick, anyway, and I can’t play with the fellers, ’cause it tires me so.

“I – I – I never git to go nowheres,” pursued Sammy, using the most atrocious English, but utterly abandoned in his grief. “You Corner House girls git all the go – go – good times, and I ain’t got even a s-s-sister to play with – ”

At this point a most astonishing thing overtook Agnes Kenway. She had begun by glaring at Sammy in anger; but as he went on to bewail his hard state, her pretty face flushed, then paled; her blue eyes filled with tears which soon began to spill over. She drew nearer to the miserable little chap, standing, dirty and forlorn, in the middle of the road.

“Now, stop that, Sammy!” she suddenly blurted out. “Just stop. Don’t cry any more.”

“He can’t go. There isn’t room,” Ruth was repeating.

Agnes turned toward the eldest Corner House girl sharply and stamped her foot.

“He shall go, Ruth Kenway – so there! He can squeeze in on the seat between Neale and me. Here! take that bag up, Neale O’Neil. There’s room for it right in here,” and she pointed. “Now! stop your crying, Sammy. You shall go; but you’ll have to be good.”

“Oh, Aggie,” cried the happy youngster, “I’ll be as good as gold. You’ll see.”

“Well!” gasped Ruth, yet not sorry that for once Agnes had usurped authority.

Mrs. Heard laughed. Dot said:

“Well, it’s true. He hasn’t any sister.”

“And I’m sure he can be good,” put in Tess, the optimist.

Neale was chuckling to himself as he put Sammy’s suitcase in the place indicated.

“What is the matter with you, Neale O’Neil?” demanded Agnes, hotly, brushing the tears out of her eyes.

“I was just thinking that this party has assumed a good deal of a contract,” said the light-haired boy.

“What for?”

“For reforming a pirate,” said Neale.

CHAPTER IX – A WAYSIDE BIVOUAC

Ruth insisted upon stopping at the first brook they came to and Sammy was made presentable – his face and hands scrubbed and his clothing brushed.

“Yuh needn’t be so particular,” said Sammy. “There’ll more dirt get on me before night.”

“Listen to him!” groaned Ruth.

Mrs. Heard laughed. “That’s what it means to have a boy in the family. Oh, I know! I brought up my nephew, Philly, for the most part. I had to watch him like a cat at a mousehole to see that he did not go to bed at night without washing his feet. He would run barefoot.”

“One of the penalties of going on this excursion, young man,” said Agnes to Sammy, “is having to keep clean. I know it’s going to be hard sledding for you; but we can’t afford to have a grubby looking youngster in the party.”

Sammy sighed, muttering: “Well! I guess I can stand it. Ma bathed me all over, every day, when I was sick. Guess that’s why I’m so thin now. She purt’ near washed me all away.”

The first day’s journey had been carefully laid out, and the party of tourists from the old Corner House knew just where they were to stay that night. They were not to be bound throughout their tour, however, by hard-and-fast plans or rules.

“It’s a poor rule that can’t be broken,” said the matter-of-fact Mrs. Heard. “Just the same we want to know something about where we are going – sometimes. I wouldn’t fancy being caught out in some wilderness on a stormy night, for instance, with nothing better than somebody’s barn to take refuge in.”

This, of course, neither she nor the others realized at the time was a prophetic statement.

Naturally, if one is to go on such an excursion as this of the Corner House girls, one must have some idea of the roads, of hotels, and of the choice of routes and hostelries, as well as distances between proposed stops.

As far as they had been able to learn there was no hotel on the road they had selected, near which they would be at noon of this first day. So, in with the suitcases and other impedimenta, was packed a lunch hamper.

When they stopped by a wayside spring for the noon bivouac, they were out of sight of every house and a long way from home. But Neale O’Neil knew this road.

“I was over it the other day with Mr. Howbridge. Pogue Lake is just back there a couple of miles. That’s a great fishing place.”

“I never did see how men and boys could be cruel enough to fish,” said Mrs. Heard, with a little shudder. “Always wanting to kill something. Hooking fish by their poor, tender mouths – it’s awful!”

“I should think it would hurt the worms worse than it would the fish, Mrs. Heard,” said the thoughtful Tess. “The long worms get cut in half – and both ends wriggle so!”

“Huh!” grunted Sammy. “Worms ain’t got no feelings. No more’n eels. And it don’t hurt an eel to skin it – so there!”

“I’d like to know how you know so much, young man,” said Mrs. Heard, tartly. “Did you ever talk to a skinned eel? Who told you it didn’t hurt ’em?”

Other automobile parties had stopped at this pleasant spot to picnic, for there were unmistakable marks of its having been thus occupied. It seems seldom to occur to picnic parties that other excursionists may wish to use the same sylvan spot which they find so lovely and leave in such disgraceful condition.

But the party from the old Corner House was careful in more ways than one.

Strapped to the side of the automobile just over the step, was a folding tripod of light lacquered steel rods. From the apex of these when they were set up, the kettle was hung, for Mrs. Heard insisted she must have her tea.

First, however, Neale O’Neil produced a small shovel and prepared a patch of sand on the grass, on which to build the fire. He was an old hand at camping out and knew very well that fire could not spread from a sandpile.

Neale had always shown himself to be quick and handy; but Mrs. Heard was immensely pleased with his despatch in getting water boiled and his part of the camping arrangements complete. Of course, the girls “set the table,” and even Sammy was made use of. He gathered the supply of dry fuel, and if Neale had not stopped him he would have piled up sufficient at the camp site for a Fourth of July bonfire.

It was after the older girls had washed the few dishes they had used and while they were resting after the lunch that the first incident of real moment on this tour of the Corner House girls occurred.

A man came tramping through the brush with a rod in his hand and a creel slung from his shoulder. He wore long wading boots and he walked through the brook into which the waters of the spring trickled, and so reached the automobile party. Tom Jonah stood up, but did not growl at him.

The man was lifting his cap and going right by when Dot Kenway uttered a squeal of surprise.

“Oh, Tess! Oh, Aggie!” she cried. “Here’s my sick man now.”

At the same moment Neale O’Neil recognized the fisherman and shouted to him:

“Hi, Mr. Maynard! What luck to-day?”

The other turned a single glance at Neale and nodded, his attention immediately becoming fixed on Dot. He approached her with a smile warming his countenance, which seemed rather saturnine in repose.

“This is my kind little friend,” he said; and although his face was deeply flushed it was not from the same cause as when the smallest Corner House girl had previously met him. “So you remember me?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Dot replied, a little bashfully, giving him her hand.

“And how is the dolly’s health? But this isn’t the one?” asked Mr. Maynard, showing that he had a good memory for some incidents of that former unfortunate afternoon.

“Oh, yes; this is my Alice-doll,” said Dot, eagerly.

“Why, she doesn’t look the same,” the man declared, warmly interested.

“She has new clothes on – and a new hat.”

“I never would have known her again,” went on Mr. Maynard.

“And you couldn’t ever guess what’s happened to her,” said Dot, seriously.

“Her face – ?”

“She’s been completely cured of a dreadful bad complexion,” confided Dot. “Neale took her to a hospital. It is wonderful what they can do to you nowadays at hospitals,” said the little girl.

“It is indeed,” agreed Mr. Maynard, taking the Alice-doll tenderly in his arms.

“I saw the place myself,” went on Dot, eagerly. “There was a big gold sign over the door, ‘Dolls’ Hospital.’ Why! I didn’t know there were such places.”

“Indeed?” responded the man, very much interested.

“Yes. And they fixed Alice’s face – and her hair. Of course, she wasn’t a real blonde before; but it’s fashionable. Like our Aggie, you know,” pursued the talkative Dot.

Meanwhile Agnes had been whispering eagerly to Neale and now they both approached Dot and her friend.

“Mr. Maynard,” said Neale, “have you see anything of Saleratus Joe again?”

“My goodness, Neale!” exclaimed the fisherman. “You could have seen both him and Jim Brady on this road this very morning. They passed me as I came along to the pond, in that big car of Brady’s.”

Mrs. Heard had been attracted by this topic of conversation. She said:

“I believe that horrid Brady brought about the stealing of my nephew’s car. And he’s shielding the men who actually did it.”

“I don’t know about that, Mrs. Heard,” said Mr. Maynard, who evidently knew the widow. “He surely didn’t have the car stolen for his own use,” and he smiled, “for that French machine of his cost him forty-five hundred dollars. He told me so the other day.”

“Are you very well acquainted with Brady, Mr. Maynard?” queried the woman, rather suspiciously.

“Why – no!” he replied, slowly. “I know most of the men who hang about the court house; and Jim thinks he can get me back in the surveyor’s office. Of course, I should be grateful if he could.”

“I don’t for a moment suppose that Brady wanted my nephew’s car,” said Mrs. Heard, sharply. “You know that?”

“Why – yes,” responded the fisherman again.

“But if Brady had it stolen, why hasn’t the car been found?” Neale put in, wonderingly.

“I told you before,” said Mrs. Heard, promptly. “They expected to find those road maps. And I guess they didn’t find ’em,” she added, with a nod of satisfaction.

“You may be right, Mrs. Heard,” agreed Mr. Maynard, but evidently desirous of saying no more.

He handed the Alice-doll back to Dot, who, with Tess, had not been much interested in this discussion, of course; and he picked up his fishing rod to depart.

“I am sorry I did not happen along before you ate your luncheon,” he said, smiling. “I could have supplied you with a nice mess of yellow perch.”

“Thank you, Mr. Maynard,” said Agnes, with a naughty twinkle in her eye. “I’m afraid we should have had to refuse them, for Mrs. Heard does not approve of fishing.”

“Goodness! but I am fond of fish, just the same,” said their chaperone, honestly.

“What would you suggest as the least cruel way of capturing fish?” Mr. Maynard asked, soberly.

“How about seining them and then chloroforming each fish?” whispered Neale to Agnes.

But the widow laughed, saying to the fisherman:

“I remember my husband used to go fishing with you, Mr. Maynard. But he never brought fish into the house where I could see them till they were ready for the pan, so as not to shock me.”

“That was quite right of him, Mrs. Heard,” said Mr. Maynard, gravely. Then he turned to Dot again. “I hope you will all have a fine time on your tour – you, especially, my dear. Do – do you suppose you could spare a kiss for me – a good-bye kiss?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” said the generous Dot. “And I truly hope you won’t be sick again, Mr. Maynard.”

The man flushed deeply, saying:

“I have not been troubled by that sickness, my dear, since the day you were so kind to me; and – please God! – I never shall be again.”

He strode away then with a nod only to the others.

CHAPTER X – THE PASSING AUTOMOBILE

After the bustle of getting under way again had quieted down and the car was speeding merrily through the woodland and past the pleasant farms of the Oxbow Valley, Agnes began to talk eagerly to Neale O’Neil about the all-absorbing topic which occupied her mind.

“How much do you suppose Mr. Maynard really knows about the stealing of Mr. Collinger’s car?” she demanded.

“Not a thing!” said her boy friend, promptly.

“Oh, Neale!”

“No. I know Mr. Maynard. He’s a perfectly square man, I am sure. I don’t suppose he ever noticed Saleratus Joe until I called his attention to him.”

“Where do you suppose they have gone?” queried the girl, starting on another tack.

“Who?”

“That Joe and the Brady man.”

“Ask me an easier one,” laughed Neale O’Neil.

“But can’t we do anything about it if we run across them?” she cried.

“Joe and Brady?” gasped Neale, in wonder.

“Yes.”

Neale eyed her quizzically for a long half minute – that is, with one eye. The other he kept faithfully on the road ahead.

“Aggie,” he said, “you beat the world. Mucilage isn’t in it with you for sticking to a thing when your mind is once set upon it.”

“Well, I don’t care!” she pouted.

“Oh, yes you do. You evidently do care or you wouldn’t be talking about that stolen car all the time. What’s the odds where Mr. Brady and his chauffeur have gone? You don’t suppose Brady knows anything about Mr. Collinger’s machine himself, do you?”

“Of course he does! I believe he had it stolen,” cried the girl.

“And if he did, so much the more reason for his not knowing anything about what was done with the car. That’s what Mr. Maynard intimated. Brady would have no use for it. And I doubt if anybody could use it long without being arrested. Hard to hide an automobile nowadays. Unless the thieves took it away up into Canada and sold it, maybe.”

“Surely that Saleratus Joe couldn’t have done that,” rejoined Agnes, instantly, “for he couldn’t have gone there and got back so quickly.”

“Good girl. Female detective, I tell you!” chortled Neale. “But how about the other fellow?”

“Who – that awful Brady?”

“Cricky! No. They say there were two fellows in Mr. Collinger’s car when it was driven away from the court house. And maybe he – the second chap – has the car now.”

“Oh, dear me! I’d like to know,” sighed Agnes.

This first day’s journey was rather long; the smaller girls were tired by mid-afternoon. So was Sammy Pinkney, although he would not admit the fact. Tess and Dot went frankly to sleep in the tonneau; Sammy kept himself awake by asking questions of Agnes and Neale, so that they could no longer discuss the stealing of Mr. Collinger’s automobile, or any other subject of moment.

“If I ever go auto riding again with a kid of his size,” growled Neale, at last, “I’ll insist on having his question-asker extracted first.”

“Huh! What’s a ‘question-asker,’ Neale? Have I got one?” was the query that capped that climax.

The effort to reach a certain old-fashioned hotel on the road to Parmenter Lake, of which Mrs. Heard knew, was successful. Without even a minor mishap Neale brought the car to the Bristow House an hour before sunset and in plenty of time for supper.

As none of the four Corner House girls had ever slept in a hotel before, this was a new experience for them. Mrs. Heard engaged two double rooms for herself and the girls, and a third for Neale and Sammy. Tom Jonah was made comfortable in the stable yard.

The big dining-room was well filled when after they had washed, they went down to supper. The Bristow was popular despite the homely manner in which it was managed.

“Good home cooking,” Mrs. Heard said, “and simple ways. These girls who wait on us are all from the neighboring families hereabout. It is not a popular resort with the sporty class of automobilists – although I notice that occasionally one of that kind gets in here.”

Her remark was to the point, for at that very moment an example to prove the truth of it was furnished by a big man sitting alone at a small table at the end of the dining room.

“What?” he suddenly bellowed. “I can’t get a drink here?”

“Tea, coffee, milk, or soft drinks,” the waitress at that table recited, calmly. “The Bristow House is temperance.”

The big man got up heavily, his face red, and refused to eat. “That settles it!” he growled. “I’d like to know what you keep a hotel for?”

“To feed people,” said the waitress, wearily. She had evidently experienced a like incident before.

“That’s Jim Brady!” whispered Agnes, in excitement, to Neale O’Neil.

Neale sat near a window. When the politician from Milton had stamped out, Neale peered around the window blind. The big French car was standing before the hotel.

“But say! that isn’t the freckled-faced fellow with him,” Agnes declared, peering around the other side of the window frame.

“No. New chauffeur. There they go – aiming for home. Guess he’s left Saleratus Joe somewhere.”

“I’d just like to know where,” sighed Agnes, returning reluctantly to her supper.

By the time supper was over Sammy was again nodding like one of those mechanical figures shop-keepers sometimes put in their show windows to attract attention. Neale had almost to carry him up to the bedroom, and did have to help him undress after he was there.

“Cricky!” ejaculated the flaxen-haired youth, “I didn’t start out on this tour with the expectation of nursing along a child, as well as an automobile. I’m going to have a lot of fun myself if I’ve got to play nursemaid for this kid.”

Neale was really good-natured, however, and, for all his scolding, he helped Sammy off with his clothing gently enough. As Ruth had threatened, there was a bath made ready for Sammy, and that rite had to be administered before the sleepy little boy could creep between the sheets.

While Sammy was splashing in the bath a shout of laughter from Neale brought Mrs. Heard and the two older girls to the door of the boys’ bedroom.

“What is the matter, Neale O’Neil?” demanded Ruth.

Neale was sitting cross-legged on the floor, rocking himself to and fro, and weak from laughter. “Look what the kid’s brought with him in his bag!” gasped the older boy. “I was looking for his night clothes – and something clean for him to put on in the morning. See the mess of stuff I found, will you?”

It was a self-evident fact that Mrs. Pinkney, Sammy’s mother, did not pack her little son’s suitcase.

Neale had hauled out first of all a tangle of fishing tackle; a baking-powder box, well filled with a supply of squirmy fish-worms, kept moist in black soil that had sifted all over the contents of the bag through the holes in the cover of the box punched to give the worms air. There was Sammy’s air-rifle in two sections and a plentiful supply of ammunition; a banana reduced to pulp; a bottle of matches; a sling-shot; a much-rusted bread-knife with its edge patiently ground upon a whetstone – evidently Sammy’s idea of a hunting-knife or a bowie-knife.

In addition there was a very grubby-looking pocket-handkerchief in which were tightly tied two slimy garden snails; there was a piece of candy in a soiled paper, with a buffalo nickel imbedded in the confection; two brass wheels out of the works of a clock; last Sunday’s lesson paper; two horse-chestnuts; and a pint flask with very suggestive looking contents.

“What?” gasped Mrs. Heard. “That boy carrying liquor?”

“And snails!” ejaculated Agnes.

“Such a mess!” exclaimed Ruth.

“But snails or the worms or anything else there,” said the widow, severely, “will not steal away men’s brains and make them ill. Where did that boy get whisky – or is it brandy?” she added.

Neale had finally extracted the cork. He first smelled and then tasted the suggestive looking liquor. Mrs. Heard gasped in horror. Agnes squealed. Ruth demanded:

“What is it?”

“It’s what I thought!” said Neale. “Licorice water. Wonder the flask didn’t break and drench everything with the stuff. And he has brought a few clothes.”

“I see very plainly,” Mrs. Heard said, when the laughter had subsided, “that the first town we come to of any size, we shall have to buy Sammy some needfuls. Goodness! how ashamed his mother will be when she learns of this.”

Sammy was too sleepy to be questioned at that time about the wonderful contents of the suitcase; but in the morning he confessed that after his mother had packed the bag for him, he had been obliged to take out “a lot of useless duds” to make room for the necessary miscellany listed above which, to his boyish mind, was far more important.

However, it afforded the party a hearty laugh and Mrs. Heard (who declared her nephew – the now dignified county surveyor – had been just like Sammy) cheerfully purchased a proper outfit for the lad.

“I knew Sammy would be an awful nuisance,” Ruth said.

“But, goodness! isn’t he funny?” giggled Agnes.

The party made a good start from the Bristow House about nine o’clock. They were to run that day to Parmenter Lake, where they might spend some time, and to one of the hotels at that resort the trunks had been sent. They expected to have their lunch again in the open, and the hamper had been filled at the Bristow House.

Ever since the day the Corner House girls had first met Mrs. Heard and her brown pony, Jonas, there had been a matter puzzling Tess and Dot; and as time passed and the curiosity of their two active young minds was not satisfied, the children had grown more and more insistent in their demands on Neale O’Neil.

They wished to know what it was Neale had whispered into the fat brown pony’s ears when the ex-circus lad had cured the stubborn creature’s balkiness – for the time being, at least.

“I’ve always thought, Neale O’Neil, that you were better than most boys,” Tess Kenway said, seriously, the subject having come up again on this morning’s run.

“And he never was so stingy before,” wailed Dot.

“If he’d only tell me what he said to Jonas,” Tess went on, “we could say it to Billy Bumps when he balks. And you know he does balk sometimes – most awfully.”

“Oh, Tess! maybe the same words that started the pony wouldn’t start a goat. Would they, Neale?” asked the smallest Corner House girl.

But Neale only grinned, and refused to be drawn like a badger. The little girls could not get him to talk at all about the mystery.

And right here, while they were miles from any village – even while they were completely out of sight of any dwelling – a most astonishing thing happened.

Without previous warning the engine began to cough, and the car ran more slowly.

“Now what’s happened, Neale?” inquired Mrs. Heard, rather nervously.

Neale made no reply at all for a minute. He tried first one lever and then another, ran slow, tried to speed up, and then found that in spite of everything he did, the engine was going dead.

He managed to get the automobile to the side of the road out of the way of other traffic before the engine entirely ceased to turn.

“Although there doesn’t seem to be much traffic of any sort over this road,” said Ruth. “We haven’t been passed by an auto this morning.”

“I should say not!” exclaimed Agnes, promptly. “Our car is no flivver, I’d have you know. Do you expect, Ruth Kenway, to have all the cars in Christendom pass us?”

“It looks now as though some of them might,” responded the older girl, laughing at her sister’s vehemence.

“I guess you’ve heard the story of the wealthy man who went out driving in his high-powered French car,” remarked Neale, who had tipped back the hood and was looking to see if he could find what was wrong, “and his chauffeur drove too slowly to suit him.

“‘This is like a funeral procession,’ said the owner to the chauffeur; ‘why don’t you drive around that flivver in front of us?’