The Corner House Girls Growing Up

"Do be feminine in your comparisons, if not feline," suggested Ruth, laughing. "Speak of great women, not of great men."

"Oh, indeed! Why, pray? Boadicea? Queen Elizabeth? Joan of Arc – "

"Oh I know who she was," declared Dot, who had been listening, open-eyed and open-mouthed, to this harangue of the volatile sister. "She was Noah's wife – and he built a big boat, and put horses and bears and pigs and goats on it so they wouldn't be drowned – and dogs and cats. And they were fruitful and multiplied and filled the earth – "

"Oh, oh, oh!" shrieked Agnes. "That child will be the death of me! Where does she pick up her knowledge of scriptural history?"

"I guess," said Ruth, kissing the pouting lips of Dot, who did not always take kindly to being laughed at, "that our old Sandyface must have been one of those cats Noah had. She has found four more little blind kittens somewhere. And what we shall do about it, I do not know."

Dot and Tess ran squealing to the shed to see the new members of the Corner House family, while Neale said, chuckling:

"It's a regular catastrophe, isn't it? Better fill the motor car with feline creatures and let Aggie and me chase around through the country, dropping cats at farmers' barns."

"Never!" proclaimed Agnes. "We mean to keep on good terms with all the farmers about Milton. We can't have them coming out and stopping us when we go by and demanding pay for all the hens you run over, Neale O'Neil."

"Never yet ran over but one hen," declared the boy quickly. "And she was an old cluck hen – the farmer said so. He thought he really ought to pay me for killing her. And she made soup at that."

"Come, come, come, children!" admonished Ruth. "Let us get out the books and see if we have quite forgotten everything we ever knew."

They gathered around the sitting-room lamp, Sammy Pinkney having appeared. Mrs. MacCall joined them with her mending, as she loved to do in the evenings. And the Corner House study hour was inaugurated for the fall with appropriate ceremonies of baked apples on the stove and a heaping plate of popcorn in the middle of the table.

"I can study so much better when I'm chewing something," Agnes admitted.

Dot was soon nodding and Mrs. MacCall from her low rocking chair observed:

"I think little folks had better go to bed with the chickens – eh, my lassie!"

"No, Mrs. Mac; I don't want to," complained the sleepy Dot. "I've got a bed of my own."

"I'll go with her," said Tess, knowing that her little sister did not like to retire alone, even if she might object to the company of chickens.

Really, none of them studied much on this evening; but they had a happy time. All, possibly, save Sammy. The thought of going to school once again made that embryo pirate very despondent.

"'Tain't that I wouldn't like to go with the fellers, and play at recess, and hear the organ play in the big hall, and spin tops on the basement play-room floor, and all that," grumbled Sammy. "But they do try to learn us such perfectly silly things."

"What silly things?" demanded Agnes with amusement.

"Why, all 'bout 'rithmetic. Huh! Can't a feller count on his fingers? What were they given us for, I'd like to know?" demanded this youthful philosopher.

"Ow! ow!" murmured Neale, vastly amused.

"Huh!" went on Sammy. "Last teacher I had – mine and Tessie's – was all the time learning us maxims, and what things meant; like love, and charity and happiness. She was so silly, she was!

"That Iky Goronofsky is the thick one," added Sammy, with a grin of recollection. "When she was trying to make us kids understand the difference between the meaning of those three words he couldn't get it into his head. So she gave him three buttons, one for love, one for charity and one for happiness, and made him take 'em home to study."

"What did he do with them!" asked Neale, interested.

"Why, when she asked Iky the next time about love, charity and happiness, he didn't know any more than he did before," said Sammy, with disgust. 'Where's your buttons, Iky?' she asks him, and Iky hauls out two of 'em.

"'There's love, Miss Shipman, and there's charity,' says Iky, 'but my mother sewed happiness on my waist this morning.' Did you ever hear of such a dunce as that kid?" concluded Sammy, with disgust.

Sunday was always a busy day, if a quiet one, at the old Corner House. Everything had been done to prepare for the expected guests; but several times Agnes had to enter the two big rooms which were to be devoted to the use of Cecile Shepard and her brother, just for the sake of making sure that all was right and ready.

In just what style the Shepards lived Agnes did not know. That they were very well-mannered and were plainly used to what is really essential to cultivated people, the Corner House girls were sure.

The visitors were not wealthy, however; far from it. They had but a single relative – a maiden aunt – and with her they made their home when they were not at school or off on peddling trips with a van and team of horses.

Cecile and Luke arrived before noon on Monday. Neale drove Ruth and Agnes down to the station in the car to meet the visitors.

"Oh, this is just scrumptious!" the second sister declared, with a sigh. "To think that the Kenways would ever arrive at the point where they can drive to the station in their own car for guests – "

"Oh, squash!" ejaculated Neale, with disgust. "She's getting to be what Uncle Rufus calls uppity. There'll be no living in the same town with my Lady pretty soon."

"It is all right," Ruth said seriously, for she did not approve of Neale any more than she could help – that was not her policy with boys. "It is perfectly proper to be glad that our circumstances have improved."

"Oh, crickey!" snorted Neale. "You girls have got up in the world, that's a fact. But I've come down. Uncle Bill Sorber wanted me to be a ground and lofty tumbler."

The sisters laughed, and what might have been a bit of friction was escaped. Even Ruth had to admit that the ex-circus boy was the best-natured person they knew.

Well, the Shepards arrived. Cecile and Luke were just as glad to see Neale as they were to see the Corner House girls.

Luke, sitting in the seat beside Neale on the way up town, whispered to him: "Isn't she sweeter than ever? I declare! I never knew so nice a girl."

"Huh?" grunted Neale, and glared at his companion for a moment, forgetting that a chauffeur should keep both eyes on his business when running a car in a crowded street.

"Say! were you trying to climb into that coal cart or only fooling?" gasped Luke, who although several years older than Neale had none of his experience as an automobile driver.

"What did you say?" asked Neale, with his eyes looking ahead again.

"Were you trying to get into that coal cart or – "

"Aw, no! About Aggie Kenway."

"Why – why I didn't say anything about her," Luke replied. "Oh! I spoke of Miss Ruth. Isn't she a splendid girl?"

"Oh! Yes! Ruth! Some!" was the way Neale agreed with this statement of the visitor.

CHAPTER VI

NAMING THE NEW BABY

Luke Shepard was a very friendly person who was bound to make himself beloved by the entire Corner House family. Unless, perhaps, Aunt Sarah Maltby refused to melt before the sunshine of his smile. He was a handsome fellow, too – curly brown hair, a good brown and red complexion, well chiseled features, brown eyes set wide apart, and lips that laughed above a well molded and firm-looking chin.

Cecile was his antithesis – sprightly and small-framed, roguish of look and behavior, without an iota of hoidenishness about her. She was inordinately fond of her brother, and she could not understand how the Corner House girls had managed to get on so many years without one boy, at least, in the family.

"Of course, you've got Neale," she said to Ruth and Agnes after they had reached the house.

"And there's Sammy Pinkney," Tess put in gravely. "I'm sure he's quite as much trouble to us as a real brother could be."