The Corner House Girls Among the Gypsies

“I don’t know, Missy Ruth,” complained the old darkey to the eldest Corner House girl, “how I’s goin’ to get that bed of winter beets weeded – I dunno, noways. My misery suah won’t let me stoop down to them rows, and there’s a big patch of ’em.”

“Do they need weeding right now, Uncle Rufus?”

“Suah do, Missy. Dey is sufferin’ fo’ hit. I’d send wo’d for some o’ mah daughter Pechunia’s young ‘uns to come over yere, but I knows dat all o’ them that’s big enough to work is reg’larly employed by de farmers out dat a-way. Picking crops for de canneries is now at de top-notch, Missy; and even Burnejones Whistler and Louise-Annette is big enough to pick beans.”

“Goodness me!” exclaimed Agnes, who overheard the old man’s complaint. “There ought to be kids enough around these corners to hire, without sending to foreign lands for any. They are always under foot if you don’t want them.”

“Ain’t it de truf?” chuckled the old man. “Usual’ I can’t look over de hedge without spyin’ dat Sammy Pinkney and a dozen of his crew. They’s jest as plenty as bugs under a chip. But now – ”

“Well, why not get Sammy?” interrupted Ruth.

“He ought to be of some use, that is sure,” added Agnes.

“Can yo’ put yo’ hand on dat boy?” demanded Uncle Rufus. “‘Nless he’s in mischief I don’t know where to look for him.”

“I can find him all right,” Agnes declared. “But I cannot guarantee that he will take the job.”

“Offer him fifty cents to weed those beet rows,” Ruth said briskly. “The bed I see is just a mat of weeds.” They had walked down to the garden while the discussion was going on. “If Sammy will do it I’ll be glad to pay the half dollar.”

She bustled away about some other domestic matter; for despite the fact that Mrs. McCall bore the greater burden of housekeeping affairs, Ruth Kenway did not shirk certain responsibilities that fell to her lot both outside and inside the Corner House.

After all was said and done, Sammy Pinkney looked upon Agnes as his friend. She was more lenient with him than even Dot was. Ruth and Tess looked upon most boys as merely “necessary evils.” But Agnes had always liked to play with boys and was willing to overlook their shortcomings.

“I got a lot to do,” ventured Sammy, shying as usual at the idea of work. “But if you really want me to, Aggie – ”

“And if you want to make a whole half dollar,” suggested Agnes, not much impressed by the idea that Sammy would weed beets as a favor.

“All right,” agreed the boy, and shooing Buster, his bulldog, out of the Corner House premises, for Buster and Billy Bumps, the goat, were sworn enemies, Sammy proceeded to the vegetable garden.

Now, both Uncle Rufus and Agnes particularly showed Sammy which were the infant beets and which the weeds. It is a fact, however, that there are few garden plants grown for human consumption that do not have their counterpart among the noxious weeds.

The young beets, growing in scattered clumps in the row (for each seed-burr contains a number of seeds), looked much like a certain weed of the lambs’-quarters variety; and this reddish-green weed pretty well covered the beet bed.

Tess and Dot had gone to a girls’ party at Mrs. Adams’, just along on Willow Street, that afternoon, so they did not appear to disturb Sammy at his task. In fact, the boy had it all his own way. Neither Uncle Rufus nor any other older person came near him, and he certainly made a thorough job of that beet bed.

Mrs. McCall “set great store,” as she said, by beets – both pickled and fresh – for winter consumption. When Neale O’Neil chanced to go into the garden toward supper time to see what Sammy was doing there, it was too late to save much of the crop.

“Well, of all the dunces!” ejaculated Neale, almost immediately seeing what Sammy had been about. “Say! you didn’t do that on purpose, did you? Or don’t you know any better?”

“Know any better’n what?” demanded the bone-weary Sammy, in no mood to endure scolding in any case. “Ain’t I done it all right? I bet you can’t find a weed in that whole bed, so now.”

“Great grief, kid!” gasped the older boy, seeing that Sammy was quite in earnest, “I don’t believe you’ve left anything but weeds in those rows. It – it’s a knock-out!”

“Aw – I never,” gulped Sammy. “I guess I know beets.”

“Huh! It looks as though you don’t even know beans,” chortled Neale, unable to keep his gravity. “What a mess! Mrs. McCall will be as sore as she can be.”

“I don’t care!” cried the tired boy wildly. “I saved just what Aggie told me to, and threw away everything else. And see how the rows are.”

“Why, Sammy, those aren’t where the rows of beets were at all. See! These are beets. Those are weeds. Oh, great grief!” and the older boy went off into another gale of laughter.

“I – I do-o-on’t care,” wailed Sammy. “I did just what Aggie told me to. And I want my half dollar.”

“You want to be paid for wasting all Mrs. McCall’s beets?”

“I don’t care, I earned it.”

Neale could not deny the statement. As far as the work went, Sammy certainly had spent time and labor on the unfortunate task.

“Wait a minute,” said Neale, as Sammy started away in anger. “Maybe all those beet plants you pulled up aren’t wilted. We can save some of them. Beets grow very well when they are transplanted – especially if the ground is wet enough and the sun isn’t too hot. It looks like rain for to-night, anyway.”

“Aw – I – ”

“Come on! We’ll get some water and stick out what we can save. I’ll help you and the girls needn’t know you were such a dummy.”

“Dummy, yourself!” snarled the tired and over-wrought boy. “I’ll never weed another beet again – no, I won’t!”

Sammy made a bee-line out of the garden and over the fence into Willow Street, leaving Neale fairly shaking with laughter, yet fully realizing how dreadfully cut-up Sammy must feel.

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune seem much greater to the mind of a youngster like Sammy Pinkney than to an adult person. The ridicule which he knew he must suffer because of his mistake about the beet bed, seemed something that he really could not bear. Besides, he had worked all the afternoon for nothing (as he presumed) and only the satisfaction of having earned fifty cents would have counteracted the ache in his muscles.

Harried by his disappointment, Sammy was met by his mother in a stern mood, her first question being:

“Where have you been wasting your time ever since dinner, Sammy Pinkney? I never did see such a lazy boy!”

It was true that he had wasted his time. But his sore muscles cried out against the charge that he was lazy.

He could not explain, however, without revealing his shame. To be ridiculed was the greatest punishment Sammy Pinkney knew.

“Aw, what do you want me to do, Maw? Work all the time? Ain’t this my vacation?”

“But your father says you are to work enough in the summer to keep from forgetting what work is. And look how grubby you are. Faugh!”

“What do you want me to do, Maw?”

“You might do a little weeding in our garden, you know, Sammy.”

“Weeding!” groaned the boy, fairly horrified by the suggestion after what he had been through that afternoon.

“You know very well that our onions and carrots need cleaning out. And I don’t believe you could even find our beets.”

“Beets!” Sammy’s voice rose to a shriek. He never was really a bad boy; but this was too much. “Beets!” cried Sammy again. “I wouldn’t weed a beet if nobody ever ate another of ’em. No, I wouldn’t.”

He darted by his mother into the house and ran up to his room. Her reiterated command that he return and explain his disgraceful speech and violent conduct did not recall Sammy to the lower floor.

“Very well, young man. Don’t you come down to supper, either. And we’ll see what your father has to say about your conduct when he comes home.”

This threat boded ill for Sammy, lying sobbing and sore upon his bed. He was too desperate to care much what his father did to him. But to face the ridicule of the neighborhood – above all to face the prospect of weeding another bed of beets! – was more than the boy could contemplate.

“I’ll run away and be a pirate – that’s just what I’ll do,” choked Sammy, his old obsession enveloping his harassed thoughts. “I’ll show ’em! They’ll be sorry they treated me so – all of ’em.”

Just who “’em” were was rather vague in Sammy Pinkney’s mind. But the determination to get away from all these older people, whom he considered had abused him, was not vague at all.

CHAPTER IV – THE GYPSY TRAIL

Mr. Pinkney, Sammy’s father, heard all about it before he arrived home, for he always passed the side door of the old Corner House on his return from business. He came at just that time when Neale O’Neil was telling the assembled family – including Mrs. McCall, Uncle Rufus, and Linda the maid-of-all-work – about the utter wreck of the beet bed.

“I’ve saved what I could – set ’em out, you know, and soaked ’em well,” said the laughing Neale. “But make up your mind, Mrs. McCall, that you’ll have to buy a good share of your beets this winter.”

“Well! What do you know about that, Mr. Pinkney?” demanded Agnes of their neighbor, who had halted at the gate.

“Just like that boy,” responded Mr. Pinkney, shaking his head over his son’s transgressions.

“Just the same,” Neale added, chuckling, “Sammy says you showed him which were weeds and which were beets, Aggie.”

“Of course I did,” flung back the quick-tempered Agnes. “And so did Uncle Rufus. But that boy is so heedless – ”

“I agree that Sammy pays very little attention to what is told him,” said Sammy’s father.

Here Tess put in a soothing word, as usual: “Of course he didn’t mean to pull up all your beets, Mrs. McCall.”

“And I don’t like beets anyway,” proclaimed Dot.

“He certainly must have worked hard,” Ruth said, producing a fifty-cent piece and running down the steps to press it into Mr. Pinkney’s palm. “I am sure Sammy had no intention of spoiling our beet bed. And I am not sure that it is not partly our fault. He should not have been left all the afternoon without some supervision.”

“He should be more observing,” said Mr. Pinkney. “I never did see such a rattlebrain.”

“‘The servant is worthy of his hire,’” quoted Ruth. “And tell him, Mr. Pinkney, that we forgive him.”

“Just the same,” cried Agnes after their neighbor, “although Sammy may know beans, as Neale says, he doesn’t seem to know beets! Oh, what a boy!”

So Mr. Pinkney brought home the story of Sammy’s mistake and he and his wife laughed over it. But when Mrs. Pinkney called upstairs for the boy to come down to a late supper she got only a muffled response that he “didn’t want no supper.”

“He must be sick,” she observed to her husband, somewhat anxiously.

“He’s sick of the mess he’s made – that’s all,” declared Mr. Pinkney cheerfully. “Let him alone. He’ll come around all right in the morning.”

Meanwhile at the Corner House the Kenway sisters had something more important (at least, as they thought) to talk about than Sammy Pinkney and his errors of judgment. What Dot had begun to call the “fretful silver bracelet” was a very live topic.

The local jeweler had pronounced the bracelet of considerable value because of its workmanship. It did not seem possible that the Gypsy women could have dropped the bracelet into the basket they had sold the smaller Corner House girls and then forgotten all about it.

“It is not reasonable,” Ruth Kenway declared firmly, “that it could just be a mistake. That basket is worth two dollars at least; and they sold it to the children for forty-five cents. It is mysterious.”

“They seemed to like Tess and me a whole lot,” Dot said complacently. “That is why they gave it to us so cheap.”

“And that is the very reason I am worried,” Ruth added.

“Why don’t you report it to the police?” croaked Aunt Sarah Maltby. “Maybe they’ll try to rob the house.”

“O-oh,” gasped Dot, round-eyed.

“Who? The police?” giggled Agnes in Ruth’s ear.

“Maybe we ought to look again for those Gypsy ladies,” Tess said. “But the bracelet is awful pretty.”

“I tell you! Let’s ask June Wildwood. She knows all about Gypsies,” cried Agnes. “She used to travel with them. Don’t you remember, Ruth? They called her Queen Zaliska, and she made believe tell fortunes. Of course, not being a real Gypsy she could not tell them very well.”

“Crickey!” ejaculated Neale O’Neil, who was present. “You don’t believe in that stuff, do you, Aggie?”

“I don’t know whether I do or not. But it’s awfully thrilling to think of learning ahead what is going to happen.”

“Huh!” snorted her boy friend. “Like the weather man, eh? But he has some scientific data to go on.”

“Probably the Gypsy fortune tellers have reduced their business to a science, too,” Ruth calmly said.

“Anyhow,” laughed Neale, “Queen Zaliska now works in Byburg’s candy store. Some queen, I’ll tell the world!”

“Neale!” admonished Ruth. “Such slang!”

“Come on, Neale,” said the excited Agnes. “Let you and me go down to Byburg’s and ask her about the bracelet.”

“I really don’t see how June can tell us anything,” observed Ruth slowly.

“Anyway,” Agnes briskly said, putting on her hat, “we need some candy. Come on, Neale.”

The Wildwoods were Southerners who had not lived long in Milton. Their story is told in “The Corner House Girls Under Canvas.” The Kenways were very well acquainted with Juniper Wildwood and her sister, Rosa. Agnes felt privileged to question June about her life with the Gypsies.

“I saw Big Jim in town the other day,” confessed the girl behind the candy counter the moment Agnes broached the subject. “I am awfully afraid of him. I ran all the way home. And I told Mr. Budd, the policeman on this beat, and I think Mr. Budd warned Big Jim to get out of town. There is some talk about getting a law through the Legislature putting a heavy tax on each Gypsy family that does not keep moving. That will drive them away from Milton quicker than anything else. And that Big Jim is a bad, bad man. Why! he’s been in jail for stealing.”

“Oh, my! He’s a regular convict, then,” gasped Agnes, much impressed.

“Pshaw!” said Neale. “They don’t call a man a convict unless he has been sent to the State prison, or to the Federal penitentiary. But that Big Jim looked to be tough enough, when we saw him down at Pleasant Cove, to belong in prison for life. Remember him, Aggie?”

“The children did not say anything about a Gypsy man,” observed his friend. “There were two Gypsy women.”

She went on to tell June Wildwood all about the basket purchase and the finding of the silver bracelet. The older girl shook her head solemnly as she said:

“I don’t understand it at all. Gypsies are always shrewd bargainers. They never sell things for less than they cost.”

“But they made that basket,” Agnes urged. “Perhaps it didn’t cost them so much as Ruth thinks.”

June smiled in a superior way. “Oh, no, they didn’t make it. They don’t waste their time nowadays making baskets when they can buy them from the factories so much cheaper and better. Oh, no!”

“Crackey!” exclaimed Neale. “Then they are fakers, are they?”

“That bracelet is no fake,” declared Agnes.

“That is what puzzles me most,” said June. “Gypsies are very tricky. At least, all I ever knew. And if those two women you speak of belonged to Big Jim’s tribe, I would not trust them at all.”

“But it seems they have done nothing at all bad in this case,” Agnes observed.

“Tess and Dot are sure ahead of the game, so far,” chuckled Neale in agreement.

“Just the same,” said June Wildwood, “I would not be careless. Don’t let the children talk to the Gypsies if they come back for the bracelet. Be sure to have some older person see the women and find out what they want. Oh, they are very sly.”

June had then to attend to other customers, and Agnes and Neale walked home. On the way they decided that there was no use in scaring the little ones about the Gypsies.

“I don’t believe in bugaboos,” Agnes declared. “We’ll just tell Ruth.”

This she proceeded to do. But perhaps she did not repeat June Wildwood’s warning against the Gypsy band with sufficient emphasis to impress Ruth’s mind. Or just about this time the older Corner House girl had something of much graver import to trouble her thought.

By special delivery, on this evening just before they retired, arrived an almost incoherent letter from Cecile Shepard, part of which Ruth read aloud to Agnes:

“… and just as Aunt Lorina is only beginning to get better! I feel as though this family is fated to have trouble this year. Luke was doing so well at the hotel and the proprietor liked him. It isn’t his fault that that outside stairway was untrustworthy and fell with him. The doctor says it is only a strained back and a broken wrist. But Luke is in bed. I am going by to-morrow’s train to see for myself. I don’t dare tell Aunt Lorina – nor even Neighbor. Neighbor – Mr. Northrup – is not well himself, and he would only worry about Luke if he knew… Now, don’t you worry, and I will send you word how Luke is just the minute I arrive.”

“But how can I help being anxious?” Ruth demanded of her sister. “Poor Luke! And he was working so hard this summer so as not to be obliged to depend entirely on Neighbor for his college expenses next year.”

Ruth was deeply interested in Luke Shepard – had been, in fact, since the winter previous when all the Corner House family were snowbound at the Birdsall winter camp in the North Woods. Of course, Ruth and Luke were both very young, and Luke had first to finish his college course and get into business.

Still and all, the fact that Luke Shepard had been hurt quite dwarfed the Gypsy bracelet matter in Ruth’s mind. And in that of Agnes, too, of course.

In addition, the very next morning Mrs. Pinkney ran across the street and in at the side door of the Corner House in a state of panic.

“Oh! have you seen him?” she cried.

“Seen whom, Mrs. Pinkney?” asked Ruth with sympathy.

“Is Buster lost again?” demanded Tess, poising a spoonful of breakfast food carefully while she allowed her curiosity to take precedence over the business of eating. “That dog always is getting lost.”

“It isn’t Sammy’s dog,” wailed Mrs. Pinkney. “It is Sammy himself. I can’t find him.”

“Can’t find Sammy?” repeated Agnes.

“His bed hasn’t been slept in! I thought he was just sulky last night. But he is gone!”

“Well,” said Tess, practically, “Sammy is always running away, you know.”

“Oh, this is serious,” cried the distracted mother. “He has broken open his bank and taken all his money – almost four dollars.”

“My!” murmured Dot, “it must cost lots more to run away and be pirates now than it used to.”

“Everything is much higher,” agreed Tess.

CHAPTER V – SAMMY OCCASIONS MUCH EXCITEMENT

“I do hope and pray,” Aunt Sarah Maltby declared, “that Mrs. Pinkney won’t go quite distracted about that boy. Boys make so much trouble usually that a body would near about believe that it must be an occasion for giving thanks to get rid of one like Sammy Pinkney.”

This was said of course after Sammy’s mother had gone home in tears – and Agnes had accompanied her to give such comfort as she might. The whole neighborhood was roused about the missing Sammy. All agreed that the boy never was of so much importance as when he was missing.

“I do hope and pray that the little rascal will turn up soon,” continued Aunt Sarah, “for Mrs. Pinkney’s sake.”

“I wonder,” murmured Dot to Tess, “why it is Aunt Sarah always says she ‘hopes and prays’? Wouldn’t just praying be enough? You’re sure to get what you pray for, aren’t you?”

“But what is the use of praying if you don’t hope?” demanded Tess, the hair-splitting theologian. “They must go together, Dot. I should think you’d see that.”

Mrs. Pinkney had lost hope of finding Sammy, however, right at the start. She knew him of course of old. He had been running away ever since he could toddle out of the gate; but she and Mr. Pinkney tried to convince themselves that each time would be the last – that he was “cured.”

For almost always Sammy’s runaway escapades ended disastrously for him and covered him with ridicule. Particularly ignominious was the result of his recent attempt, which is narrated in the volume immediately preceding this, to accompany the Corner House Girls on their canal-boat cruise, when he appeared as a stowaway aboard the boat in the company of Billy Bumps, the goat.

“And he hasn’t even taken Buster with him this time,” proclaimed Mrs. Pinkney. “He chained Buster down cellar and the dog began to howl. So mournful! It got on my nerves. I went down after Mr. Pinkney went to business early this morning and let Buster out. Then, because of the dog’s actions, I began to suspect Sammy had gone. I called him. No answer. And he hadn’t had any supper last night either.”

“I am awfully sorry, Mrs. Pinkney,” Agnes said. “It was too bad about the beets. But he needn’t have run away because of that. Ruth sent him his fifty cents, you know.”

“That’s just it!” exclaimed the distracted woman. “His father did not give Sammy the half dollar. As long as the boy was so sulky last evening, and refused to come down to eat, Mr. Pinkney said let him wait for that money till he came down this morning. He thought Ruth was too good. Sammy is always doing something.”

“Oh, he’s not so bad,” said the comforting Agnes. “I am sure there are lots worse boys. And are you sure, Mrs. Pinkney, that he has really run away this time?”

“Buster can’t find him. The poor dog has been running around and snuffing for an hour. I’ve telephoned to his father.”

“Who —what? Buster’s father?”

“Mr. Pinkney,” explained Sammy’s mother. “I suppose he’ll tell the police. He says – Mr. Pinkney does – that the police must think it is a ‘standing order’ on their books to find Sammy.”

“Oh, my!” giggled Agnes, who was sure to appreciate the comical side of the most serious situation. “I should think the policemen would be so used to looking for Sammy that they would pick him up anywhere they chanced to see him with the idea that he was running away.”

“Well,” sighed Mrs. Pinkney, “Buster can’t find him. There he lies panting over by the currant bushes. The poor dog has run his legs off.”

“I don’t believe bulldogs are very keen on a scent. Our old Tom Jonah could do better. But of course Sammy went right out into the street and the scent would be difficult for the best dog to follow. Do you think Sammy went early this morning?”

“That dog began to howl soon after we went to bed. Mr. Pinkney sleeps so soundly that it did not annoy him. But I knew something was wrong when Buster howled so.

“Perhaps I’m superstitious. But we had an old dog that howled like that years ago when my grandmother died. She was ninety-six and had been bedridden for ten years, and the doctors said of course that she was likely to die almost any time. But that old Towser did howl the night grandma was taken.”

“So you think,” Agnes asked, without commenting upon Mrs. Pinkney’s possible trend toward superstition, “that Sammy has been gone practically all night?”

“I fear so. He must have waited for his father and me to go to bed. Then he slipped down the back stairs, tied Buster, and went out by the cellar door. All night long he’s been wandering somewhere. The poor, foolish boy!”

She took Agnes up to the boy’s room – a museum of all kinds of “useless truck,” as his mother said, but dear to the boyish heart.

“Oh, he’s gone sure enough,” she said, pointing to the bank which was supposed to be incapable of being opened until five dollars in dimes had been deposited within it. A screw-driver, however, had satisfied the burglarious intent of Sammy.

She pointed out the fact, too, that a certain extension bag that had figured before in her son’s runaway escapades was missing.

“The silly boy has taken his bathing suit and that cowboy play-suit his father bought him. I never did approve of that. Such things only give boys crazy notions about catching dogs and little girls with a rope, or shooting stray cats with a popgun.

“Of course, he has taken his gun with him and a bag of shot that he had to shoot in it. The gun shoots with a spring, you know. It doesn’t use real powder, of course. I have always believed such things are dangerous. But, you know, his father —