The Corner House Girls Under Canvas

It was right at the head of the lane that they met the man. He was not a bad looking man at all, and he was driving a nice horse to a rubber-tired runabout.

He drew in the horse, that seemed to have already traveled some miles that morning, and looked hard at Tom Jonah.

“Well,” he said, cheerfully, “there’s the old tramp himself. How long have you girls had him?”

The four Corner House girls stood stock-still, and even Ruth was smitten dumb for the moment.

“Tom Jonah, you rascal!” said the man, not unkindly. “Don’t you know your old master?”

At first the dog had not seen him; but the moment he heard the man’s voice, he halted and his whole body stiffened. The plume of his tail began to wave; his jaws stretched wide in a doggish smile. Then, as the man playfully snapped the whip at him, Tom Jonah barked loudly.

“Where did you get him!” the man repeated, looking at the Corner House girls again.

Tess and Dot were clinging to each other’s hands. Agnes stared at the man belligerently. Ruth said – and her voice was not quite steady:

“Do you think you know Tom Jonah, sir?”

“What do you think yourself, Miss?” responded the man, rather gruffly. “I guess there’s no mistake about whether he knows me and I know him.”

“No, sir,” said Ruth, bravely. “But lots of people may know him.”

“Do you mean to put in a claim for the dog?” interrupted the man, quickly.

“Tom Jonah came to our house in Milton,” began Ruth, when again the man interrupted with:

“Of course. He was on his way home to me. I sold him to a man who lives forty miles beyond Milton.”

“Then you do not own him?” Ruth said, with a feeling of relief.

The man looked at her steadily for a minute. Ruth had recovered her self-possession. Tess and Dot were now on either side of Tom Jonah, with their arms about the dog’s neck. Agnes was very angry, but remained silent.

“I raised that dog from a pup, Miss. I owned his mother. I raised him. I put his name on his collar. He has it there yet, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir,” admitted Ruth.

“He’s always been a good dog. He’s a gentleman if ever a dog was! He had the run of the house. My wife and the girls made a great pet of him. But by and by they said he was too big and clumsy for the house. They have a couple of little fice– lap-poodles, or the like. Tom Jonah was put out, and he got jealous. Yes, sir!” and the man laughed. “Just as jealous as a human.”

“Oh!” gasped Agnes. She disliked that man!

“My name’s Reynolds,” said the man. “Everybody knows me about Shawmit. I run a lumber-yard there.

“Well! Tom Jonah got to running away to the neighbors. Stayed a while with one, then with another. Always liked kids, Tom Jonah did, and he’d stay longest where there were kids in the family.

“But it got to be a nuisance. I didn’t know whether the dog belonged to me or somebody else. So I sold him to a relative of my wife’s who came on visiting us, and took a fancy to Tom Jonah, and who lives – as I said – forty miles beyond Milton. So the old fellow was on his way back home when you took him in, eh?”

“He came to us at Milton,” Ruth replied. “He wanted to stay. I brought him down here to take care of my little sisters. We’re living in a tent down on the shore yonder – ”

“And we’re going to keep him!” interrupted Agnes, angrily.

“Hush! Be still, Aggie!” begged Ruth, in a low tone.

“You don’t claim you bought him, I suppose?” said the man who called himself Reynolds.

“But we will!” cried Ruth, instantly. “We will gladly pay for him.”

“Oh, he’s not for sale again,” laughed the man. “I sold him once and he wouldn’t stay sold, you see.”

“Then he doesn’t belong to you now, any more than he does to us, really,” Ruth hastened to say.

“Well – that’s so, I suppose,” admitted the man.

“We won’t give Tom Jonah up to anybody,” said Agnes again.

Dot was crying and Tess could scarcely keep from following her lead. Tom Jonah stood solemnly, his eyes very bright, his tail waving slowly. He looked from the girls to the man in the runabout, and back again. He knew they were discussing him; but he did not know just what it was all about.

“If we have to,” said Ruth, with much more confidence in her voice than she felt in her heart, “we will give Tom Jonah up to the person who really owns him. We do not know you, sir. We do not know if what you say is true. You must prove it.”

“Well! I like that!” said the man in a tone that showed he did not like it at all. “You are a pretty pert young lady, you are. I guess I’ll take my own dog home. I heard he was over here to the beach and I drove over particularly to get him.”

“Take him, then!” exclaimed Ruth, desperately. “If Tom Jonah will go with you, all right. You call him.”

“Come here, boy!” commanded the man.

Tom Jonah did not move. Ruth took a hand of each of the smaller girls and led them away from the big dog.

“Come, children,” she said. “We’ll go on. If Tom Jonah really loves us, he’ll come, too.”

The dog whined. He looked from the red-faced, angry man to the four girls who loved him so well.

“Come here, Tom Jonah!” commanded the man again. He had turned his horse and was evidently headed for home. “Come, sir!”

The Corner House girls were moving sadly away. Agnes glanced back and actually made a face at the man in the runabout. Fortunately he did not see it.

“Come on, Tom Jonah!” said the man for the third time.

The dog was perplexed. He showed it plainly. He started after the man; he started back for the girls. He whined and he barked. He was torn by the conflicting emotions in his doggish soul.

“What’s the matter with him?” exclaimed the man, and snapped his whiplash at Tom Jonah.

At that, Dot uttered a shriek of anguish. Tess burst into tears. Agnes started back as though to protect the dog. Even Ruth could not forbear to utter a cry.

“Here, Tom Jonah! here, sir!” Agnes shouted. “Come on, you dear old fellow.”

The dog barked, circled the moving carriage once, and then raced down the road toward the Corner House girls. The man shouted and snapped his whip. Tom Jonah did not even look back at him when he caught up with the girls.

“Hurry up! let’s run with him, Ruthie,” begged Agnes.

But there was no need of that. The man did not turn his horse and follow. He was quickly out of sight and Tom Jonah gave no sign of wishing to follow his old master.

The incident troubled the Corner House girls vastly. Even Ruth was devoted to the good old dog by this time. If he were taken away by this Mr. Reynolds, it would be like losing one of the Corner House family.

Ruth feared that Mr. Reynolds would find some legal way of getting possession of Tom Jonah. She wished Mr. Howbridge were here to advise them what to do. She even wished now that she had not brought Tom Jonah to Pleasant Cove to act as their “chaperon.”

The smaller girls dried their eyes after a time. Agnes, “breathing threatenings,” as Ruth said, promised Tess and Dot that the man never should take Tom Jonah away. But Ruth wondered what they would do about it if Mr. Reynolds came to Willowbend Camp with a police constable and a warrant for the dog?

And, too, who had sent Mr. Reynolds word that Tom Jonah was at the beach? He particularly said that he had been informed of the fact. It seemed to Ruth that the informer must be their enemy.

Then, out of a dust cloud that had been drawing near the Corner House girls for some few moments, appeared the forefront of a big touring car. In it were Trix Severn and some of her friends from the Overlook House.

“Oh! there’s Trix!” murmured Agnes to her older sister.

The hotel-keeper’s daughter would not look at the Corner House girls. She, certainly, had proved herself their enemy. Ruth wondered if Trix had had anything to do with bringing Mr. Reynolds to Pleasant Cove, searching for his dog.

Ruth knew that the hotel-keeper’s daughter often rode over to Shawmit; she was probably on her way there now with her party. And after the way Trix had acted at the time the Spoondrift bungalow was burned, one might expect anything mean of Trix. For once Ruth allowed her suspicions to color her thoughts.

“She has awfully good times, just the same,” murmured Agnes.

“Who does?” demanded Ruth, tartly.

“Trix.”

“I declare!” exclaimed Ruth, with more vexation than she usually displayed. “I’d be ashamed that I ever knew her after the way she’s acted. And I believe, Agnes, that we can thank her for setting that man after Tom Jonah.”

“Oh, Ruth! Do you believe so?”

“I do,” said the older Corner House girl, and she explained why she thought so.

Mr. Severn bought many of his supplies in Shawmit, and Trix was forever running over there in the car. It did not strain one’s imagination very much to picture Trix hearing about Mr. Reynolds’ dog and recognizing Tom Jonah from the description. Besides, the Severns had been coming to Pleasant Cove for several seasons, and Trix might easily have seen the dog when he lived with his first master.

“Oh, dear me!” sighed Agnes. “It does seem too bad that one’s very best friends sometimes turn out to be one’s enemies. Who’d have thought Trix Severn would do such a thing?”

“Of course, we don’t know,” admitted Ruth, trying to be fair. “But who else could have told Mr. Reynolds about Tom Jonah?”

Ruth went into the first store in the village that sold such things and bought a new leash. This she snapped into the ring of his collar and made the old dog walk beside them more decorously.

Tess and Dot could scarcely keep from hugging him all the time; they wanted Ruth to agree to take the very next train back to Milton, for they thought with the dog once at the old Corner House, nobody could take him away from them.

“I didn’t like that man at all, anyway,” Tess declared. “He had red whiskers.”

“Is – is that a sign that a man’s real mean if he has red whiskers, Tess?” asked Dot, wonderingly.

“It’s a sign Tess doesn’t like him,” laughed Agnes. “But I don’t like that Reynolds man myself. Do you, Ruthie?”

“We’re all agreed on that point I should hope,” said Ruth. “But we won’t run away with Tom Jonah. If that man comes for him again, I’ll find some way to circumvent him. The good old dog belongs to us, if he does to anybody. And as long as he wants to live with us, he shall. So now!”

The other Corner House girls finally forgot their worriment about Tom Jonah. Ruth warned them not to talk about it to the girls they met. They did their errands in the village and then went on to Spoondrift bungalow where they spent a very enjoyable day.

Neale O’Neil and Joe Eldred came after supper to escort the Corner House girls back to Willowbend Camp. Tess and Dot had taken a nap during the afternoon, so were not a drag on the procession, going home.

They went around by the home of the little old woman who lived in the shoe. Ruth and Agnes had been talking with the boys about the mystery of the strange girl who had shared in the adventures of Tess and Dot on Wild Goose Island. They all agreed she must be a Gypsy; but Ruth had kept to herself the knowledge of the girl’s identity as the Gypsy “queen.”

“I saw several of the Gypsies about the beach to-day,” Joe Eldred said. “That snaky, scarred-faced fellow was one of them.”

“He’s the ring-leader, I believe,” Ruth hastened to say.

“Can’t just see what they are after, hanging about here,” Neale observed. “There isn’t much to steal. Everybody’s brought just the oldest things they own down here to the beach.”

“And there are no hens to steal,” chuckled Agnes.

“I bet none of them will come near the tents while Tom Jonah is on guard,” Neale added, snapping his fingers for the dog who was running ahead in the moonlit path.

Suddenly Tom Jonah stopped and growled. They had arrived in sight of the queer little cottage where Rosa Wildwood lived with Mrs. Bobster. The young folk could even see the drawn shade of the sitting-room window.

“There’s that man again!” exclaimed Agnes.

“What man?” Joe Eldred asked.

“Mrs. Bobster’s mysterious friend,” giggled Agnes. “See his shadow on the curtain?”

“And he’s sitting there with his hat on,” murmured Neale.

But it was Ruth who saw the other – and more important – shadow. This was the figure of a tall man slipping along the outer side of Mrs. Bobster’s picket fence. It was this shadow at which Tom Jonah was growling.

The man came to the gate, opened it softly, and stole in. His furtive movements gave the big dog his cue. He leaped forward, barking vociferously, leaped the fence, and followed the running figure around the corner of the house.

Mrs. Bobster shrieked – the young folk outside could hear her. But her “company” did not move. He still sat there with his derby hat on.

The boys started after the dog. The girls stood, clinging to one another’s hands, at the corner of the fence.

From around the house appeared another running figure; but this was a girl. She flung herself headlong over the fence, and her skirt caught on a picket. Ruth ran forward to release her.

“Oh, my dear!” she gasped. “Where did you come from?”

It was the girl she had first noticed in the train with the Gypsy woman – the very girl who had been on Wild Goose Island with Tess and Dot. It was she who had masqueraded as Zaliska, the Gypsy queen.

CHAPTER XXIV – BROUGHT TO BOOK

“Let me go! Let me go!” gasped the girl in Ruth’s arms. “He will get me.”

“Who’ll get you?” demanded the wondering Agnes.

“Big Jim, the Gypsy. He’s after me,” said the strange girl.

“And Tom Jonah and the boys are after him,” declared Ruth. “Don’t you fret; Big Jim won’t come back here.”

“Who is she, Ruth?” asked Agnes.

“Never mind who I am,” said the girl, rather sharply. “Let me go.”

“I know why you were lurking about here,” Ruth said, calmly. “You heard that Rosa Wildwood is stopping here.”

“Well?” demanded the other.

“Then you are June Wildwood. You’re her sister. I don’t know how you came to be with those Gypsies, and masquerading as an old woman – ”

“My goodness!” gasped Agnes. “Was she that Gypsy queen?”

“Yes,” Ruth said, confidently. “Now, weren’t you?” to the strange girl. “And aren’t you Rosa’s sister who ran away two years ago?”

“Oh, I am! I am!” groaned the girl.

“Well, Rosa’s just crazy to see you. And your father has been searching for you everywhere,” said Ruth, quickly. “You must come in and see Rosa. There’s Mrs. Bobster opening the front door.”

The shadow of the man with the derby hat on his head still was motionless upon the shade; but the widow had opened the front door on its chain, and now demanded:

“Who’s there? what do you want?”

“It’s only me, Mrs. Bobster,” cried Ruth.

Tess and Dot were already running toward the cottage door. “Oh, Mrs. Bobster!” Tess cried, “here’s the girl that helped us on the island – me and Dot.”

“And my Alice-doll,” concluded Dot, likewise excited. “And Ruthie says she’s Rosa’s sister.”

“For the good land of liberty’s sake!” ejaculated Mrs. Bobster, throwing wide the door. “Come in! Come in!”

The girl whom Ruth had seized hesitated for a moment. Ruth whispered in her ear:

“Rosa is wearing her heart out for you, June Wildwood. And your father isn’t drinking any more. He has a steady job. You come back to them and you needn’t be afraid of those Gypsies.”

“They’ll try to get me back. Doc. Raynes’ wife was one of them. The old doctor died a year ago, and since then I’ve been with that gang,” said June Wildwood.

“Were the doctor and his wife the folks you ran away with?”

“Yes. I danced and sang and dressed up in character to help entertain their audiences when he sold bitters and salve,” the girl explained. “The old doctor treated me all right. But these thieving Gypsies are different. Mrs. Doc. Raynes is Big Jim’s sister.”

“Don’t you be afraid of them any more. We’ll set the police after them,” Ruth declared. “Where have you been since the day my sisters were with you?”

“I’ve been washing dishes at a hotel here in Pleasant Cove. But I kept under cover. I was afraid of them,” said the girl.

They reached the door then, and went into the cottage. Mrs. Bobster ushered them right into the sitting-room and at once all the girls halted in amazement. There was an armchair standing between the window and the center table, where the lamp sat. Leaning against the chair was the broom, and on the business end of that very useful household implement was a hat that had probably once belonged to the husband of the little old woman who lived in a shoe.

“My goodness sake!” ejaculated Agnes, the first to get her breath. “Then it was not company you had at all, Mrs. Bobster?”

“No,” said the widow, in a business-like way, removing the hat from the broom and standing the latter in the corner. “But I didn’t want folks to know it. There’s some stragglers around here after dark, and I wanted ’em to think there was a man in the house.”

At that moment Rosa Wildwood came running downstairs in wrapper and slippers. “I heard her! I heard her!” she shrieked, and the next moment the two sisters were hugging each other frantically.

Explanations were in order; and it took some time for the little old lady who lived in a shoe to understand the reunion of her boarder and the girl who had lived with the Gypsies.

The boys and Tom Jonah came back, having chased the lurking Big Jim for quite a mile through the woods. “And Tom Jonah brought back a piece of his coat-tail,” chuckled Neale O’Neil. “He can consider himself lucky that the dog didn’t bite deeper!”

“I guess that dog doesn’t like Gypsies,” said June Wildwood, patting Tom Jonah’s head.

The boys were just as much interested as their girl friends in the reunion of Rosa and her sister. Meanwhile Mrs. Bobster bustled about and found the usual pitcher of cool milk and a great platter of cookies. The young folk feasted beyond reason while they all talked.

Ruth arranged with the little old woman who lived in a shoe to let June stay with her sister, and she promised June, as well, that if she would return to Milton with Rosa, employment would be found for her so that she could be self-supporting, yet live at home with Rosa and Bob Wildwood.

The Corner House girls offered to leave Tom Jonah to guard the premises for that night. But Mrs. Bobster said:

“I reckon I won’t be scaret none with two great girls in the house with me. Besides, when I am asleep, being lonesome don’t bother me none – no, ma’am!”

“Well, we don’t know how long we’re going to have old Tom Jonah ourselves,” sighed Agnes, as the party bound for the tent colony started on again.

“How’s that!” demanded Neale, quickly.

They told him about the man named Reynolds, from Shawmit, and the claim he had made to the big dog. Neale was equally troubled with the Corner House girls over this, and he advised Ruth and Agnes to take the dog wherever they went.

“Don’t give the fellow a chance to find Tom Jonah alone, or with the little girls,” said Neale. “I don’t believe he can get the dog legally without considerable trouble. And Tom Jonah has shown whom he likes best.”

This uncertainty about Tom Jonah, however, did not keep the Corner House girls from continuing their good times at Pleasant Cove. With one of the ladies of the tent colony for chaperon the girls and their boy friends had many a “junket” – up the river, down the bay, and even outside upon the open sea.

It was on one of these latter occasions that Ruth and Agnes joined Neale and his friends on the “double-ender,” Hattie G., and with her crew spent a night and a day chasing the elusive swordfish.

That was an adventure; and one not soon to be forgotten by the older Corner House girls. Of course Tess and Dot were too small to go on this trip and they were fast asleep in one of the neighboring tents when Neale O’Neil came and scratched on the canvas of that in which Ruth and Agnes slept.

“Oh!” gasped Agnes. “What’s that!”

“Is that you, Neale?” demanded Ruth, calmly.

“Of course. Get a bustle on,” advised the boy. “The motorboat will be ready in ten minutes.”

“Mercy!” ejaculated Agnes, giggling. “You know we don’t wear bustles, Neale. They are too old-fashioned for anything.”

She and Ruth quickly dressed. There wasn’t much “prinking and preening” before the mirror on this morning, that was sure. In ten minutes the two Corner House girls were running down the beach, with their bags (packed over-night) and their rain-coats over their arms. Tom Jonah raced after them.

Everywhere save on the beach itself the shadows lay deep. There was no moon and the stars twinkled high overhead – spangles sewed on the black-velvet robe of Night.

Out upon the quietly heaving waters sounded voices – then the pop of a launch engine.

“Come on!” urged Neale’s voice. “They’re getting the boat ready, girls.”

“But we’re not going out to the banks in the Nimble Shanks– surely!” cried Agnes.

“No. But we’re going down the cove in her to catch the Hattie G. Skipper Joline sent up a rocket for us half an hour ago. The tide’s going out. He won’t wait long, I assure you.”

“It would be lots more comfortable to go all the way in the motorboat – wouldn’t it?” asked Ruth, stepping into the skiff after Agnes and the dog.

“Skipper Joline would have a fit,” laughed Joe Eldred. “A motorboat engine would scare every swordfish within a league of the Banks – so he says. He declares that is what makes them so hard to catch the last few seasons. These motorboats running about the sea are a greater nuisance than the motor cars ashore – so he declares.”

“I suppose the swordfish shy at the motorboats just like the horses shy at automobiles!” giggled Agnes, as Neale and Joe pushed off and seized the oars.

“Yep,” grunted Neale O’Neil. “And the motorboats have frightened all the horse-mackerel away. That’s a joke. I’ll tell the Skipper that.”

Several shadowy figures – being those of the other boys and Mr. and Mrs. Stryver, who were members of the swordfishing party, too – were spied about the deck and cockpit of the Nimble Shanks. The boys shot the skiff in beside the motorboat and helped the girls aboard. Then they moored the skiff to the motorboat’s buoy and soon the Nimble Shanks was away, down the cove.

It was past two o’clock – the darkest minutes of a summer’s morning. Seaward, a light haze hung over the water – seemingly a veil of mist let down from the sky to shut out the view of all distant objects from the out-sailing mariners.

As the party neared the fishing fleet, voices carried flatly across the water, and now and then a dog barked. Tom Jonah answered these canines ashore with explosive growls. He stood forward, his paws planted firmly on the deck, and snuffing the sea air. Tom Jonah was a good sailor.

“Got your scare?” a voice came out of the darkness, quavering across the cove. “Going to be thick outside.”

Neale grabbed the fish-horn and blew a mighty blast on it. Similar horns answered from all about the fleet.

A towering mast, with its big sail bending to the breeze, shot past them – the big cat-boat, Susie, bound for her lines of lobster-pots just off the mouth of the cove. Her crew hailed the launch and her party – four sturdy young fellows in jerseys and high sea-boots.

“Whew!” said Joe. “Smell that lobster bait! I’d hate to go for a pleasure trip on the Susie.”

The Hattie G. was just ahead and Mr. Stryver shut off the engine. The drab, dirty looking old craft tugged sharply at her taut mooring cable. She had two short masts, and on these heavy canvas was being spread by the crew, which consisted of five men and a boy.

One of the men was the skipper, another the mate, a third the cook; but all hands had to turn to to make sail. There were several sweeps (heavy oars) held in bights of rope along the rail. Both ends of the Hattie G. were sharp; in other words she had two bows. Thus the name, “double-ender” – a build of craft now almost extinct save in a few New England ports out of which ply the swordfishermen.

Skipper Joline came to the rail. He was a hoarse, red-faced man with a white beard, cut like a paintbrush, on his chin.

“Climb aboard, folks,” he said. “Steve will get breakfast shortly. There’s a bit of fog and some swell outside. Better all lay in a good foundation of scouse and sody biscuit. Ye’ll need it later.”