The Corner House Girls Growing Up

"Oh, Sammy!" gasped Dot, clasping her hands across the Alice-doll's stomach, "are – are there girl pirates?"

"Are there what?" questioned Sammy in doubt.

"Can girls run away and be pirates, too?"

"Why – er – they wouldn't dars't."

"Yes, I would."

"You! Dot Kenway?"

"Yes I would," repeated Dot stubbornly.

"You want to be a pirate?" repeated Sammy. Of course he would rather have a boy to run away with. But then —

"Why can't girls be pirates?" demanded the logical Dot. "Don't pirates have to have somebody to cook and wash and keep house for them?"

"I – I don't know," admitted Sammy honestly. "I never read about any girl pirates. But," as he saw Dot's pretty face beginning to cloud over, "I don't know why there shouldn't be, if they wasn't too 'fraid."

"I won't be afraid," Dot declared, steeling herself as she had once done when she was forced to go to the dentist's office.

"We-ell," began Sammy still doubtfully. But Dot was nothing if not determined when once she made up her mind.

"Now, you come right along, Sammy Pinkney, if we're going to run away and be pirates. You know your mother won't let you if she comes home and catches you here."

"But – but we ought to take something to eat – and some clothes – and – and a pistol and a knife – "

"Oo-ee!" squealed the little girl. "You won't take any horrid pistol and knife if you're going to run off to be pirates with me, Sammy Pinkney. Why, I'd be afraid to go with you."

"Huh!" grumbled Sammy, "you don't haf to go."

"But you said I could," Dot declared, sure of her position. "And now you can't back out – you know you can't, Sammy. That wouldn't be fair."

"Aw, well. We gotter have money," he objected faintly.

"I'll run and get my purse," the little girl said cheerfully. "I've got more than fifty cents in it."

But now unwonted chivalry began to stir faintly in Sammy's breast. If they were going away together, it should be his "treat." He marched into the house, smashed his bank with the kitchen poker, and came out with a pocket full of silver and nickels that looked as if they amounted to much more than they really did.

However, the sinews of war in his pocket was not without a certain inspiration and comfort. Money would go a long way toward getting them to a place where their respective families could neither nag nor punish them.

As runaways they may have been different from most. But, then, Sammy and Dot were very modern runaways indeed. People who saw them merely observed two very well dressed children, walking hand in hand toward the suburbs of Milton; the little girl hugging a doll to her breast and the boy with a tight fist in one pocket holding down a couple of dollars worth of change.

Who would have dreamed that they were enamored of being pirates and expected to follow a career of rapine and bloodthirsty adventure on the Spanish Main?

CHAPTER X

ABOARD THE NANCY HANKS

It must be confessed – and not to the belittlement of Sammy Pinkney – that he never would have run away to be a pirate on this occasion had it not been for Dot Kenway. When this little miss had once set her mind to a thing it took a good deal to turn her from her purpose.

It had been Sammy's dire threat for a long time that he would seek the adventurous life of a buccaneer on the rolling main. But he had never set a definite date for his departure upon this venture. To-day was the day. Fate willed it thus. And it looked as though fate was disguised in the character of a strong-minded little girl with two cherry-red hair-ribbons and a doll hugged tightly in her arms.

Sammy, however, having once embarked on the venture considered that he must take a certain lead in affairs. Dot certainly had urged him away from home and mother; but now she gave up the guidance of affairs entirely into her companion's hands.

She had no more idea of what "being pirates" meant than she had of the location where "pirating" as a profession might be safely pursued. On Sammy's part, he knew that pirates roved the sea. The nearest water to the corner of Willow and Main Streets was the canal. Therefore he led the little girl by the hand toward that rather placid body of water that flowed through one end of Milton and into the river.

The canal connected two tributaries of a large watercourse – the largest in the state, in fact; but it was not a very busy waterway. Now and then a battered old barge was drawn through by a pair of equally battered horses or mules. Milton people held the canal folk in some contempt. But then, they knew very little about the followers of the inland waterways as a class.

Sometimes some of the canal boatmen came over as far as Meadow Street to purchase provisions of Mrs. Kranz, or of Joe Maroni, both of whom occupied stores on property belonging now to the four Corner House girls; and the way the two small runaways took on this day led them directly past this Meadow Street property.

"If we are going to be pirates," said Sammy rather soberly for him, "we must lay in a stock of provisions. We've got to eat, you know."

"Oh! have we?" asked the little girl, to whom the fact of piracy was a sublimated sort of existence in which she had not considered it would be necessary to think of mundane things.

"I've got the money, and we'll lay in a stock," Sammy said, proud of his position now as acknowledged leader of the expedition.

Mrs. Kranz, the German woman who kept the delicatessen store, was not at all surprised to see Dot. The Corner House girls often visited her and the other tenants on the property, and Dot was particularly beloved by the good woman.

"My! my! Undt de baby, too? Coom right in undt haf some nice pop-sarsaparilla. I haf some on de ice yet – you undt your young man."

"Oh, Mrs. Kranz!" cried Dot, eagerly, "we haven't come to visit you. We've come to buy something."

But Sammy nudged her quickly. "Let's have the sarsaparilla," he whispered in Dot's ear, as the generous woman bustled away to the icebox. "That'll go fine."

Maria Maroni, oldest of the fruit dealer's family, who dwelt in the cellar of the building but lived mostly with Mrs. Kranz, waited upon Sammy; so the storekeeper herself had no idea of the queer order Sammy gave.

He bought crackers – mostly of the animal kind; a piece of cheese; fishhooks; a ball of twine; a sack of potatoes (Maria ran and got those from her father); a pencil and a pad of paper; some raisins; a jar of peanut butter; some drop-cakes; and ten cents' worth of a confection just then very popular, called by the children "gumballs."

All these things, save the gumballs, he had put in a flour sack, and told Dot they were ready to depart.

"Undt dat iss a pig pundle of t'ings Mrs. MacCall sent you for," said Mrs. Kranz placidly, as the runaways started out of the store.

"Oh, Mrs. MacCall didn't send us," Dot explained.

"No? Are dey for de poy's mutter!"

"Oh, no. You see, Mrs. Kranz," Dot said gravely, "we're going to be pirates, and we have to have a stock of things to eat. Don't we, Sammy?"

"Come along," growled Sammy, fearful that they would be laughed at.

But Mrs. Kranz was befogged. She had never before heard of pirates, and she did not know whether it was a game, a lodge one belonged to, or a picnic. She guessed it was the last, however, for she bade them a hearty farewell and hoped they would have a pleasant day.

As they came out there was Joe Maroni himself, the neat, smiling, brown little Italian in his corduroy suit and with gold rings in his ears, ready waiting with a basket piled high with fruit.

"For the leetle padrona," Joe said, with a smiling bow, sending his usual gift to Ruth, whom he considered a grand signora and, as his "landlady," deserving of such thoughtful attentions.

"Aw, say!" cried Sammy his eyes growing big; "that's scrumptious."