The Corner House Girls Growing Up Part 5

CHAPTER IV

SCHOOL IN THE OFFING

Neale O 'Neil, trained as an acrobat, had never lost his suppleness and skill in trapeze work and other gymnastics since leaving Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie. There was a fine gymnasium at the Milton high school which he attended, and Neale had made his mark in the gymnasium work as well as in the studies he loved.

It was no trick at all for him to put up the wire attachments to make the aerial tramway altogether to the satisfaction of Tess and Dot and Sammy Pinkney. Before evening the following day the wire was stretched and in place, the pulleys rigged, and the wire basket, which was used as the car, was traveling back and forth briskly from the window of Sammy's bedroom to one of the windows of the large room in the east ell of the old Corner House where Tess and Dot slept and had their dolls and playthings.

With lengths of clothesline to pull the wire car back and forth, it was easy for the children to manipulate it. And the car was roomy enough and strong enough to hold almost anything they might wish to send between the two houses.

Of course, it was not exactly an airs.h.i.+p of any kind. But for the time Tess Kenway, who was usually modestly satisfied with what was done for her, was perfectly delighted with the arrangement.

As for Dot, she was so pleased, that she felt compelled to sit right down in the middle of the drying green beneath the wire, clasping the Alice-doll close to her breast, and gaze up at the car going back and forth as Sammy and Tess manipulated it.

"Oh! it's delightsome!" gasped the little girl, quoting one of Agnes'

favorite expressions.

When Sammy came down and looked over the fence at her he said:

"Say, Dot, let's give your dolls a ride."

"Sam-my Pink-ney!" shrilled Dot vigorously. "If you ever try to ride my Alice-doll or any of her sisters in that car up there I'll-- I'll never speak to you again!"

And she was so much in earnest and seemed so near to tears that Sammy hastily gave his word of honor--as a man and a pirate--never to treat the dolls to such an aerial trip.

Mabel Creamer, who lived next door on Main Street, wheeled her little brother over to Willow Street to view the wonder of the aerial tramway.

When she heard that Dot and Tess would not allow their dolls to be used as pa.s.sengers in the aerial car, she offered to put Bubby up there.

"Why, Mabel!" gasped Tess. "S'pose he should fall out?"

"Oh," Mabel replied coolly, "he wouldn't hurt himself. He rolled all the way down the cellar stairs yesterday and didn't do a thing to himself--only broke the cat's dish, 'cause he landed on it."

"That's some tough baby," p.r.o.nounced Neale; but after Mabel had wheeled Bubby away Tess confided to Neale that she knew why the Creamer's youngest was so "tough."

"Why, you know," Tess said earnestly, "almost everything that could happen to a baby has happened to him. Mabel hates to take care of him, and she is always forgetting and leaving him to tumble out of the carriage, or into something babies aren't supposed to get into."

"And 'member when he got carried away in the hamper by the laundryman?"

broke in Dot. "If it hadn't been for our Agnes following in Joe Eldred's motor car, Bubby might have been washed and ironed and brought back to Mrs. Creamer just as flat as a pancake!"

"That's the capsheaf," chuckled Neale O'Neil. "Bubby Creamer is certainly a wonderful kid. What do you say, Aggie?" for the older girl had just appeared, ready dressed for a shopping excursion.

"Silk-wool to mend my sweater; pins--two kinds; pearl b.u.t.tons for Dot's waists; a celluloid thimble for Linda; a pair of hose for Mrs.

Mac--extra tops; Aunt Sarah's peppermints for Sunday service; lace for Ruthie's collar; hair ribbons for Tessie; a _love_ of a waist I saw at Blackstein & Mape's! and----"

"Help! Help!" cried Neale, breaking in at last. "And you expect _me_ to accompany you on a shopping trip, Aggie, when you've all those feminine folderols to buy?"

"Why not?" demanded Agnes, making innocent eyes. "I want you to carry my packages."

"All right. But you'll hitch me out in front of the store to a hitching post like any other beast of burden," returned Neale, following in her footsteps out of the side gate.

This was a Sat.u.r.day. Ruth had said that if they were to have company all the following week and school was to open a week from Monday, they had all better get out their school books on this evening and begin to get familiar with the studies they were to go back to so soon.

"At least, we would better see if we all remember our A B C's," she said dryly. "You, Sammy, after being out so long last term because of the scarlet fever, will have to make up some studies if you wish to keep up with your cla.s.s."

"Don't care whether I keep up or not," growled Sammy. "I just hate school. Every time I think of it I feel like going right off and being a pirate, without waiting to learn navigation."

For Mr. Pinkney, who was a very wise man, had explained to Sammy that there was scarcely any use in his thinking of being a pirate if he could not navigate a s.h.i.+p. And navigation, he further explained, was a form of mathematics that could only be studied after one had graduated from high school and knew all about algebra.

Nevertheless, Sammy appreciated the fact that he was included in Ruth's invitation and could bring his books over to the Corner House sitting-room where the girls and Neale O'Neil were wont to study almost every week-day night during the school year.

Neale usually took supper at the Corner House on Sat.u.r.day evenings and, considering the way he came back from the shopping expedition laden with bundles, he certainly deserved something for "the inner man," as he himself expressed it. A truly New England Sat.u.r.day night supper was almost always served by Mrs. MacCall--baked beans, brown bread and codfish cakes.

And pudding! Mrs. MacCall was famous for her "whangdoodle pudding and lallygag sauce"--a t.i.tle she had given once to cottage pudding and its accompanying dressing to satisfy little folks' teasing questions as to "what is _that_?" Neale O'Neil was very fond of this delicacy.

As he pa.s.sed his plate for a second helping on this occasion he quoted with becoming reverence: "The woman that maketh a good pudding is better than a tart reply."

"But Mrs. Adams made a tart once," observed Dot seriously, "and instead of sifting powdered sugar on it she got hold of her sand-shaker, and when she gave Margaret Pease and me each a piece it gritted our teeth so we couldn't eat it. So then," concluded Dot, "she found out what she had done."

"If she'd given it to Sammy Pinkney," Tess said morosely, "I guess he'd have eaten it right down and never said a word. I saw him drop his bread and b.u.t.ter and 'la.s.ses on the ground once, and he picked it right up and ate it. He said the ground was clean!"

"No wonder Sammy's such a gritty little chap," chuckled Neale.

"Well," Mrs. MacCall said cheerfully, and with her usual optimism, "it's an old saying that everybody has to eat a peck of dirt before he dies."

"So 'tis, Mrs. MacCall," Aunt Sarah rejoined from her end of the table, and with a scornful sniff. "But I want to know whose dirt I'm eating.

That Sammy Pinkney is nothing but a little animal."

This puzzled Dot somewhat, and she whispered to Ruth: "Ruthie, are _good_ little boys, then, vegetables!"

"No, dear," the elder sister said, smiling while the others laughed.

"Both bad little boys and good little boys, as well as girls, are human beings."

"And," said Tess soberly, trying to recall something she had learned in the past, "there isn't any difference between bad girls and bad boys, only the boys are of the male s.e.x and the girls are of the feline s.e.x."

At that statement there was a burst of laughter.

"You certainly said something that time, Tess," declared Neale. "For if there is anything more feline than a girl that's mad--"

"Nothing like that, Neale O'Neil," interrupted Agnes quickly. "You would better sing pretty small, young man. Remember you are outnumbered."

"Yes," said Tess sedately, "you haven't even Sammy here now to take your part, you know, Neale."

"True for you, Tessie," agreed Neale. "I am in an infinitesimal minority."

Dot's eyes opened wide as these long words sounded from the boy's lips, and she gulped just as though she were swallowing them down for digestion. Agnes' eyes twinkled as she asked the smallest girl: