The Corner House Girls Growing Up

Things sometimes begin to go wrong the very moment one wakes up in the morning.

Then there is the coming down to breakfast with a teeny, weeny twist in one's temper that makes some unfeeling person say:

"I guess you got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning."

Now, of course, that is silly. There can be no wrong side to a bed – that is, to get out of. Getting up has nothing to do with it. Things are just wrong and that is all there is to it.

Fortunately this state of mind seldom lasted all day with any of the four Corner House girls; nor did they often begin the day in such a humor.

But there are exceptions to every rule, they say. And this Wednesday most certainly was the day when matters were "at sixes and sevens" for Dorothy Kenway.

It would not be at all surprising if the trouble started the evening before when she learned that she had inadvertently named her new baby No Smoking. That certainly was cause for despair as well as making one feel horribly ridiculous.

Of course, Ruth in her kind way, had tried to make the smallest Corner House girl forget it; but Dot remembered it very clearly when morning came and she got up.

Then, she could not find the slippers she had worn the day before; and if Mrs. MacCall saw her with her best ones on, there would be something said about it – Dot knew that.

Then, Tess seemed suddenly very distant to her. She had something on her mind and carried herself with her very "grown-upest" air with Dot. The latter, on this morning particularly, hated to admit that Tess was more than a very few days older than herself.

Tess went off on this business that made her so haughty, all by herself, right after breakfast. When Dot called after her:

"Where are you going, Tess?" the latter had said very frankly, "Where you can't go," and then went right on without stopping for a moment to argue the point.

"I do think that is too mean for anything!" declared Dot to herself, quite too angry to cry. She sat sullenly on the porch steps, and although she heard Sandyface purring very loudly and suggestively, just inside the woodshed door, she would not get up to go to see the old cat's babies – of which Sandyface was inordinately proud.

"Wait," ruminated Dot, shaking her head. "Wait till Tess Kenway wants me to go somewhere with her. I won't go! There, now!"

So she sat, feeling very lonesome and miserable, and "enjoying" it immensely. She need not have been lonely. She could hear the older girls and Luke laughing in the front of the house, and she would have been welcomed had she gone there. Ruth was always a comforter, and even Agnes seldom said the smallest girl nay.

But Dot had managed to raise a laugh a little while before – she being the person laughed at. She chanced to hear Luke, who was running lightly over the old and yellowed keys of the piano, say:

"No wonder these instruments cost so much. You know it takes several elephants alone to make these," and he struck another chord.

Dot had heard about the intelligence of elephants and like most other little people believed that the great pachyderms could do almost anything. But this was too much for even Dot Kenway's belief.

"Oh, Ruth! elephants can't work at that trade, can they?" she demanded.

"What trade, honey?" asked the surprised older sister.

"Piano making. I should think that carpenters built pianos – not elephants."

Of course, the older ones had laughed, and Dot's spirits had fallen another degree, although Ruth was careful to explain to the little girl that Luke had meant it took the tusks of several elephants to fashion the ivory keys for one piano.

However, Dot was in no mood for "tagging" after the older ones. She just wanted to sit still and suffer! She heard Mabel Creamer "hoo-hooing" for her from beyond the yard fence, but she would not answer. Had it not been for the Alice-doll (which of course she hugged tight to her troubled little breast) life would have scarcely seemed worth living to the smallest Corner House girl.

And just then she looked up and saw a picture across the street even more woe-begone than the one she herself made. It was Sammy Pinkney, gloom corrugating his brow, an angry flush in his cheeks, and sullenly kicking the toe first of one shoe and then the other against the pickets of the fence where he stood.

It was evident that Sammy had been forbidden freedom other than that of his own premises. He stared across at the smallest Corner House girl; but he was too miserable even to hail Dot.

After all, it seemed to the latter, that Sammy was being inordinately punished for having given Sandyface and her family an aerial ride. Besides, misery loves company. Dot was in no mood to mingle with the joyous and free. But Sammy's state appealed to her deeply.

She finally got up off the step and strolled out of the yard and across the street.

"'Lo, Sammy," she said, as the boy continued to stare in another direction though knowing very well that she was present before him.

"'Lo, Dot," he grumbled.

"What's the matter, Sammy?" she asked.

"Ain't nothin' the matter," he denied, kicking on the pickets again.

"Dear me," sighed Dot, "I just think everything's too mean for anything!"

"Huh!"

"And everybody at my house is mean to me, too," added the little girl, stirring up her own bile by the audible reiteration of her thoughts. "Yes, they are!"

"Huh!" repeated the scornful Sammy. "They ain't nowhere near as mean to you as my folks are to me."

"You don't know – "

"Did they lick you?" demanded the boy fiercely.

"No-o."

"And then make you stay in your room and have your supper there?"

"No-o."

"Ma brought it up on a tray," the boy said fiercely, "so I couldn't get no second helping of apple dumpling."

"Oh, Sammy!" Somehow, after all, his misery seemed greater than her own. Yet there was a sore spot in the little girl's heart. "I – I wish I could run away," she blurted out, never having thought of such a thing until that very moment. "Then they'd see."

"Hist!" breathed Sammy, coming closer and putting his lips as close to the little girl's ear as the pickets would allow. "Hist! I am going to run away!"

Dot took this statement much more calmly than he expected.

"Oh, yes," she said. "When you go to be a pirate. You've told me that before, Sammy Pinkney." In fact, she had been hearing this threat ever since she had come to the old Corner House and become acquainted with this youngster.

"And I am going to be a pirate," growled Sammy, with just as deep a voice as he could muster.

"Oh! not now?" gasped Dot, suddenly realizing that this occasion was fraught with more seriousness than any previous one of like character. "You aren't going right off now to be a pirate, Sammy Pinkney?"

"Yes, I am," declared the boy.

"Not now? Not this morning? Not before your mother comes back from marketing?" for she had seen Mrs. Pinkney's departure a few minutes before.

"Yes, I am," and Sammy clinched it with a vigorous nod, although he had not meant to run away until nightfall. People usually waited for night to run away so it seemed to Sammy, but he was not going to have his intention doubted.