The Corner House Girls on a Tour

With Neale – and sometimes aided by her sisters – she had planned elaborate routes through the surrounding country – sometimes into neighboring states. She had borrowed maps and guide books galore and had purchased not a few. In fact, in a desultory way, she and Neale had picked up a smattering of knowledge of roads and towns and hotels and general geographical information which really might be of use if, as Ruth said they would, the Corner House girls should go on a tour in the new seven-passenger car.

They talked about it to the exclusion of almost everything else that evening, and Agnes spread the news abroad at school the next day. That the Corner House girls really owned a car was already an important fact to their school friends.

For Ruth and Agnes were not likely to be selfish in their enjoyment of their new possession. Stinginess was not a fault in the Kenway family.

On the very second Saturday after they had come into possession of the car Neale had taken out the older girls and a party of their friends in the morning, and in the afternoon Tess and Dot had played hostesses to a lot of little girls. As Mr. Howbridge remarked with a laugh, the cost of the new car was a mere drop in the bucket. Maintenance and gasoline were the items that would deplete the pocketbooks of his wards.

As for Neale O’Neil, he almost lived in the car.

Of course, the entire family had to try it – even to Linda. Linda enjoyed it, and in her broken English stated it as her opinion that “heafen could be not like dis.” Which was a statement not to be contradicted.

Mrs. MacCall was doubtful about the utility of the machine after all. Uncle Rufus, when he went out with Neale and the little girls and not a few of the pets, including a couple of kittens and Tom Jonah, just clung to the seat-rail with both hands and actually turned gray about the corners of his mouth.

As for Aunt Sarah Maltby, she had set her face against the innovation from the first.

“But of course,” she said, in her severe way, “it doesn’t matter what I say or what my opinion may be. Nobody asks me to advise. I am a non-entity in this house.”

That was the beginning. Ruth and Agnes and even Mrs. MacCall had to coax and plead and cajole before the old lady would promise to take a ride in the car. When she did, she dressed in her Sunday dress – the one she always went to church in – and carried her prayer-book.

This was a state of “preparedness” that amused Agnes and Neale very much. Aunt Sarah evidently expected the worst. She even carried in her pocket the peppermint lozenges which she always took to church with her and nibbled at in sermon time.

Indeed, Aunt Sarah, who was a pessimist at the best of times, approached the ordeal in such a way that Ruth really began to pity her.

“I don’t care! she’d spoil all our fun,” protested Agnes, exasperated.

But the older sister said: “Perhaps she can’t help it after all, Aggie. And if she really is scared, I am sorry.”

At that Agnes whispered sharply: “Look at her face!”

Neale was running the car carefully, but at a good speed, on one of the pleasantest and smoothest highways around Milton. The air was invigorating, the outlook was beautiful, and the car ran like a charm.

In a moment of forgetfulness, perhaps, Aunt Sarah’s grim countenance had changed. It did actually seem as though there was a smile hovering about her lips. To the two girls who rode with her in the tonneau it seemed as though it must be impossible for anybody not to enjoy the ride.

“Isn’t it splendid, Aunt Sarah?” queried Ruth, with shining eyes, leaning toward the old woman.

Instantly Aunt Sarah’s face became – as usual – forbidding. She shook her head with determination.

“No, Niece Ruth, it is nothing of the kind,” she declared. “I do not like it at all. I knew I shouldn’t. I wish to return.”

“Well!” Agnes had gasped in her sister’s ear. “Don’t try to tell me! If Aunt Sarah was not almost laughing then, why, then her face slipped!”

CHAPTER VII – WHAT SAMMY DID

School had closed, and the long and glorious vacation had been ushered in. The Corner House girls had now lived in Milton for two years, and felt very much at home.

They knew many people – Agnes said: “A whole raft of people,” but Ruth did not approve of such language and accused her fly-away sister of learning it from Neale O’Neil.

“Poor Neale! Must he be blamed for all my sins?” asked Agnes, with a wry smile. She was mending a tear in a very good skirt – and she did not like to sew.

“Oh, I will not accuse him of being the cause of that, Aggie,” said Ruth, pointing to the tear.

“You’re wrong,” retorted her sister with a sudden elfish smile. “If he had not chased me, to get those cherries I stole from him, I wouldn’t have caught my skirt on the nail and ‘tored’ it, as Dot would say.”

“Tomboy!” declared Ruth, rather scornfully.

“I don’t care,” Agnes said, biting off her thread. “I hope I’ll never be starched and stiff.”

“But you are getting older,” went on Ruth.

“Not too decrepit to run yet,” retorted Agnes, pertly.

Ruth laughed at that, and pinched her sister’s rosy cheek. “Nevertheless,” she said, “that is one of the skirts you will be obliged to wear on our tour.”

“Oh! Our tour!” cried Agnes, ecstatically, clasping her hands. “Ouch!”

“What is the matter?” demanded Ruth, startled by her sister’s squeal.

“Stuck my finger with this horrid needle,” mumbled Agnes, sucking the pricked digit.

She went back to her sewing as Ruth went out of the room. In came Neale in cap, goggles, and leggings.

“Oh, Neale! Have you got the car out?”

“Why, Aggie!” cried the boy, without replying to her question, and eyeing the work in her lap askance. “I am surprised! You’re just like Satan – as we had it in our lesson last Sunday – aren’t you?”

“Well! I like your impudence. In what way, please?” demanded Agnes.

“Why, you’re sewing tears, aren’t you?” chuckled Neale. “And the Bible says the Evil One ‘sowed tares.’”

“Oh, don’t! It’s too great a shock. But, are you going out with the car?”

“Been out,” said the boy. “I took Mr. Howbridge over to Brenton Woods to catch the train for the West on the Q. V. We won’t see him again until we’re back from our tour.”

“Oh, yes! Our tour!” repeated Agnes; but this time she did not clasp her hands in ecstasy. She looked at her pricked finger ruefully instead.

“And coming back,” went on Neale, “I happened to run across Mr. Maynard.”

“Oh, yes!” cried Agnes again, but in an entirely different tone.

“He’d been fishing. You see, he doesn’t have much to do now that he’s out of the surveyor’s office. That’s why he – he gets into trouble so much, I suppose. That and worrying about the death of his wife and baby. I brought him home in the car.”

“Did you ask him about that Joe fellow?”

“Saleratus Joe?”

“Yes. If that’s what you are bound to call him,” Agnes said.

“I did. Mr. Maynard doesn’t know the fellow personally. He didn’t seem to remember much about that day he met Dot. He remembers her, though,” Neale said, thoughtfully. “Asked about her in a shamefaced sort of way.”