The Corner House Girls in a Play

Mrs. Eland was just as pink-cheeked and pretty as ever indoors; but the children saw that her hair was almost white. Whether it was the white of age, or of trouble, it would have been hard to say. In either case Mrs. Eland had not allowed the cause of her whitening hair to spoil her temper or cheerfulness.

That her natural expression of countenance was sad, one must allow; but when she talked with her little visitors, and entertained them, her sprightliness chased the troubled lines from the lady's face.

"And – and have you found your sister yet, Mrs. Eland?" Tess asked hesitatingly in the midst of the visit. "I – I wouldn't ask," she hastened to say, "but Miss Pepperill wanted to know. She asked twice."

"Miss Pepperill?" asked the matron, somewhat puzzled.

"Yes, ma'am. Don't you 'member? She's my teacher that wanted me to learn the sovereigns of England."

"Why, of course! I had forgotten," admitted Mrs. Eland. "Miss Pepperill."

"Yes. And she's much int'rested in you," said Tess, seriously. "Of course, everybody is. They are going to make a play, and we're going to be in it – "

"I'm going to be a bee," said Dot, in a muffled voice.

"And it's going to be played for money so's you can stay here in the hospital and be matron," went on Tess.

"Ah, yes, my dear! I know about that," said Mrs. Eland, with a very sweet smile. "And I know who to thank for it, too."

"Do you?" returned Tess, quite unconscious of the matron's meaning. "Well! you see, Miss Pepperill's interested, too. She only asked me for the second time to-day if I'd seen you again and if you had found your sister."

"No, no, my dear. I never can hope to find her now," said Mrs. Eland, shaking her head.

"She was lost in a fire," said Dot, suddenly.

"Why, yes! how did you know?" queried the lady, in surprise.

"The man that shot the eagle said so," Dot replied. "And he wanted to know if you were much related to Lem – Lemon – "

"Lem-u-el!" almost shrieked Tess. "Not Lemon, child. Lemuel Aden."

"Oh, yes!" agreed the smaller girl, quite calmly. "That's just as though I said Salmon for Samuel – like Sammy Pinkney. Well! It isn't such a great difference, is it?"

"Of course not, my dear," laughed Mrs. Eland. "And from what people tell me, my Uncle Lemuel must have been a good deal like a lemon."

"Then he was your uncle?" asked Tess.

"And – and was he real puckrative?" queried Dot. "For that's what Aunt Sarah says a lemon is."

"He was a pretty sour man, I guess," said Mrs. Eland, shaking her head. "I came East when I was a little girl, looking for him. That was after my dear father and mother died and they had taken my sister away from me," she added. "But what about the man that shot the eagle? Who was he?"

Tess told her about their adventures of the previous Saturday in the chestnut woods and the visit to the farmhouse afterward. Dot added:

"And that eagle man don't like your Uncle Lem-u-el, either."

"Why not?" asked Mrs. Eland, quickly, and flushing a little.

Before Tess could stop the little chatterbox – if she had thought to – Dot replied: "'Cause he says your uncle's brother stole. He told us so. So he did, Tess Kenway – now, didn't he?"

"You mustn't say such things," Tess admonished her.

But the mischief was done. The matron lost all her pretty color, and her lips looked blue and her face drawn.

"What do you suppose he meant by that?" she asked slowly, and almost whispering the question. "That my Uncle Lem's brother was a thief? Why, Uncle Lem only had one brother."

"He was the one," Dot said, in a most matter-of-fact tone. "It was five hundred dollars. And the eagle man said he and his mother suffered for that money and she died – his mother, you know – 'cause she had to work so hard when it was gone. Didn't she, Tess?"

The conversation had got beyond Tess Kenway's control. She felt, small as she was, that something wrong had been said. By the look on Mrs. Eland's pale face the kind-hearted child knew that she was hurt and confused – and Tess was the tenderest hearted child in the world.

"Oh, Mrs. Eland!" she crooned, coming close to the lady who sat before her little stove, with her face turned aside that the children should not see the tears gathering in her eyes. "Oh, Mrs. Eland! I guess Mr. Buckham didn't mean that. Of course, none of your folks could be thieves – of course not!"

In a little while the matron asked the children a few more questions, including Mr. Buckham's full name, and how he was to be reached. She had not been in the neighborhood of Ipswitch Curve since she had first come from the West – a newly made orphan and with the loss of her little sister a fresh wound in her poor heart. So she had forgotten the strawberry farmer, and most of the other people in the old neighborhood where her father had lived before going West.

Dot Kenway was quite unconscious of having involuntarily inflicted a wound in Mrs. Eland's mind and heart that she was doomed not to recover from for long weeks. As the sisters bade the matron good-bye, and started for the old Corner House, just as dusk was falling, Tess felt that her friend, Mrs. Eland, was really much sadder than she had been when they had begun their call.

Tess, however, could not understand the reason for this.

CHAPTER XIII

NEALE SUFFERS A SHORTENING PROCESS

Naturally, Neale O'Neil stopped at the old Corner House on his way home with his new suit of clothes, to display them to Agnes and the others. In spite of Ruth's pronounced distaste for boys, she could not help having a secret interest in Neale O'Neil, and Agnes and Mrs. MacCall were not the only inmates of the Stower mansion that wanted to see the new suit on the boy, to be sure, before he appeared at church in it the next Sunday, that it fitted him properly.

"There!" exclaimed the housekeeper, the moment Neale came back from the bathroom where he had made the change, and she saw how the gray suit looked. "I never knew that Merriefield, the clothier, to sell a suit but what either the coat was too big, the vest too long, or the pants out o' kilter in some way. Look at them pants!" she added, almost tragically.

"Wha – what's the matter with them?" queried Neale, somewhat excited, and trying to see behind him. He was quite an acrobat, but he could not look down his spinal column. "Are they torn?"

"Tore? No! Only tore off a mile too long," snorted Mrs. MacCall.

"I declare, Neale," chuckled Agnes, "they are awfully long. They drag at the heel."

"And I've got 'em pulled up now till I feel as though I was going to be cut in two," complained the boy.

"Made for a man – made for a man," sniffed Aunt Sarah, who chanced to be in the sitting room. She did not often take any interest in Neale O'Neil – or appear to, at least. But she eyed the too long trousers malevolently. "Ought to be cut off two inches."

"Yes; a good two inches," agreed Mrs. MacCall.

"Leave the pants here, Neale, and some of us will get time to shorten them for you before next Sunday. You won't want to wear them before then, will you?" said Ruth.

"Oh, no," returned Neale. "I'm not going to parade these to school, first off – just as Agnes does every new hair-ribbon she buys."

"Thank you, Mr. Smartie. Hair-ribbons aren't like suits of clothes, I should hope."

"If they were," chuckled the boy, "I s'pose you'd have a pair of my trousers tied on your pigtail and hanging down your back."

For that she chased him out of the house and they had a game of romps down under the grape-arbor and around the garden.

"Dear me!" sighed Ruth, "Neale makes Aggie so tomboyish. I don't know what to do about it."