The Corner House Girls on a Tour

“Say! that isn’t getting us anywhere,” began the boy again. “Can’t you hurry? Just think! the first ride in your car!”

“Don’t remind me,” gasped Agnes, cutting a crooked slice. “My nerves are all jumping now like – like a delightful toothache!”

“Glory! listen to her,” laughed Neale. “But say, Miss Ruthiford Ten-ways, why do you say that it is my fault that you are not all ready?”

“Because we have to put up lunch enough to satisfy your appetite,” said Ruth, running cold water on the eggs from the open faucet.

“Well! I like that!” said Neale.

“I fancy you will, sonny,” said Agnes, looking at him slyly. “There are lots of goodies in it.”

“Now run and get your hats and wraps, children,” commanded Ruth seizing the last two slices of bread Agnes had cut. “That will do, Aggie. Leave a little bread for the folks to eat to-day while we’re gone. That basket is all packed, Neale, and you may take it out and put it in the tonneau.”

“Oh, my!” gasped Agnes, clasping her hands. “Doesn’t that sound fine?”

“What sounds fine!” asked her boy chum, surreptitiously putting the last crumb of a broken sandwich he had found into his mouth.

“The way Ruth said ‘tonneau.’ So – so Frenchy and automobily!”

“Why, Aggie!” gasped Tess, in amazement, before following Dot out of the kitchen, “you’re making up words just like Dot does.”

“I feel like making up words,” laughed Agnes, who had been “crazy for a car” for months and months! “We’ll all be talking about ‘tonneaus,’ and ‘carbureters,’ and ‘gas,’ and ‘wiring,’ and ‘differentials,’ and – ”

“And ‘equilaterals,’ and ‘isosceles triangles,’ and all that,” scoffed Neale. “You’ll know a hot lot about an automobile, Agamemnon.”

“Come, young man!” exclaimed Ruth, tartly, for she was very exact with boys, feeling sure that she did not approve of them – much, “suppose you take the basket out to the car – and these wraps – and this coffee – and the little nursery icebox with the milk bottles – and – ”

“Hold on! Hold on!” yelled Neale O’Neil. “What do you think I have – as many arms as a spider? I can’t do it all in one trip.”

“Well, you might make a beginning,” suggested Ruth. “Come, Aggie. Don’t moon there all day.”

“I’m not,” said her next youngest sister. “I’m thinking.”

“What’s the difference?” demanded Neale, filling his arms with several of the things indicated by Ruth and making for the door.

“I was thinking,” said Agnes, quite seriously for her, “what a difference this is from what we were before we came to Milton and the old Corner House to live.”

Neale had gone out. Ruth looked at her with softer eyes. Ruth was not exactly pretty, but she had a very sweet face. Everybody said so. Now she looked her understanding at Agnes.

“I know, dear – I know,” she said, in her low, full, sweet voice. “This is like another world.”

“Or a dream,” said Agnes. “Do – do you suppose we’ll ever wake up, Ruthie, and find out it’s all been make-believe?”

Ruth laughed outright at that and went over and kissed her. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you,” the older sister said. “It is all real – very real indeed. What could be more real than an automobile – and of our very own?”

Dot came dancing into the room hugging a doll in her arms and cheerfully humming a school song.

“There!” exclaimed Agnes, coming out of the clouds, “I suppose that disreputable Alice-doll has got to go along. It does look awful.”

Dot stopped her song at once and her lips pouted.

“She isn’t dis – disreput’ble – she isn’t!” she cried, stormily. “She’s only sick. How would you like it, Aggie Kenway, if you’d been buried alive —and with dried apples – and had had your complexion spoiled?”

Dot was usually the most peaceful of mortals; but Agnes had touched a sore spot.

“Never mind; you shall take her, love,” Ruth said.

“I suppose if we want to go off on a real tour by and by – this coming vacation – Dot’ll have to lug that Alice-doll,” grumbled Agnes. “Suppose we meet nice people at some of the hotels we stop at, and other little girls have dolls? Dot’s will look as though she came from Meadow Street.” Meadow Street was in a poor section of Milton.

“I don’t care,” grumbled Dot; “she’s going.”

“She ought to go a hospital first,” declared Agnes.

“Who ought to go to a hospital?” demanded Neale, coming in again.

“My Alice-doll, Neale,” cried Dot, running to him, sure of sympathy – of a kind, at least.

“Well,” said the boy, “why not? If folks go to hospitals and get cured, why not dolls?”

“Oh, Neale O’Neil!” gasped Dot, hugging her cherished doll closer.

“Just think how nice Mrs. Eland was to folks in her hospital,” went on Neale, his eyes twinkling. “And Doctor Forsyth. A hospital is a mighty fine place.”

“But – but what would they do to my Alice-doll?” asked the smallest girl, seriously.

“Suppose they should give her a new complexion? Make her quite well again? Wouldn’t that be worth while?”

Dot held the really dreadful looking doll away from her and gazed with loving eyes upon the wreck of her former pink and white beauty.

“She is just as – as dear to me as ever she was,” she sighed. “But I s’pose her complexion is muddy – and her nose is flattened a little – and her lips aren’t red any more-and her eyes are washed out. But – but are you sure they won’t hurt her?”

“We’ll have to find a hospital where they agree not to hurt,” said Neale seriously.

“Now you’ve got yourself in a mess, Neale O ‘Neil,” whispered Agnes. “She’ll never let you rest.”

But the boy only grinned at her. Tess came back. Ruth brought the hats of Agnes and herself and their outer wraps. Everything that they could possibly need for the day’s outing was gathered together and taken out to the big, shiny, seven-passenger touring car that stood gloriously in the morning sunshine before the Willow Street door of the old Corner House.

Tom Jonah, the old Newfoundland dog, and the guardian of the premises, evidently desired to accompany the merry party; but Ruth vetoed that, although he might have ridden in the front seat with Neale.

“And I’m going to ride there myself,” declared Agnes, firmly. “I’ve got to learn to run this car right away. If Neale could learn, and get a license, I can. By the way, Neale, where is your license?”

“Oh, I’ve got it with me,” returned the boy. “D’ you want me to have it pasted on the back of my coat?”

“Tom Jonah must stay at home – and the kittens, too,” said Tess, looking at the troop of cats and kittens lingering about the side porch, waiting for their morning meal.

“And Billy Bumps,” added Dot, referring to the solemn old goat grazing on the drying green.

Uncle Rufus, the black factotum of the Corner House, came up from the garden, grinning widely at them.