The Corner House Girls Under Canvas

“Mr. Smartie!” snapped Agnes. “You be good, or you sha’n’t have any.”

“If that Tom Jonah hadn’t been busy on a certain night, none of us would have eaten those particular frying chickens,” laughed Neale. “I wonder if that Gypsy is running yet?”

“He didn’t get the frying chickens in the bag,” said Agnes. “They were in another coop. We hatched them in January and brought them up by hand. Say! I don’t believe you know much about natural history, Neale, anyway.”

“I guess he knows more than Sammy Pinkney does,” Tess said, again drawn into the conversation. “Teacher asked him to tell us two breeds of dairy cattle and which gives the most milk. She’d been reading to us about it out of a book. So Sammy says:

“‘The bull and the cow, Miss Andrews; and the cow gives the most milk.’”

Dot’s school held its closing exercises one morning, and Tess’ in the afternoon. Then came the graduation of Agnes and Neale O’Neil from the grammar school. Ruth was excused from her own classes at High long enough to attend her sister’s graduation.

Although the plump Corner House girl was no genius, she always stood well in her classes. Ruth saw to that, for what Agnes did not learn at school she had to study at home.

So she stood well up in her class, and she did look “too distractingly pretty,” as Mrs. MacCall declared, when she gave the last touches to Agnes’ dress before she started for school that last day. Miss Ann Titus, Milton’s most famous seamstress and “gossip-in-ordinary,” had outdone herself in making Agnes’ dress. No girl in her class – not even Trix Severn – was dressed so becomingly.

The envious Trix heard the commendations showered on her former friend, and her face grew sourer and her temper sharper. She well knew she had invited the Corner House girls to be her guests at Pleasant Cove; but she did not want them in her party now. She did not know how to get out of “the fix,” as she called it in her own mind.

She had intimated to two or three other girls who were going, however, that Agnes and Ruth had forced the invitation from her in a moment of weakness. If she had to number them of her party, Miss Trix proposed to make it just as unpleasant for the Kenway sisters as she could.

High school graduation was on Thursday. On Friday a special through train was put on by the railroad from Milton to Pleasant Cove. It was scheduled to leave the former station at ten o’clock.

Luckily Mrs. MacCall had insisted upon having all the trunks and bags packed the day before, for on this Friday morning the Corner House girls had little time for anything but saying “good-bye” to their many friends, both human and dumb.

“Whatever will Tom Jonah think?” cried Tess, hugging the big dog that had taken up his abode at the Corner House so strangely. “He’ll think we have run away from him, poor fellow!”

“Oh! don’t you think that, Tom Jonah!” begged Dot, seizing the dog on the other side. “We all love you so! And we’ll come back to you.”

“You’ll give him just the best care ever, won’t you, Uncle Rufus?” cried Agnes.

“Sho’ will!” agreed the old colored man.

“Can’t we take him with us, Ruthie?” asked Dot.

Ruth would have been tempted to do just this had she been sure that they would hire a tent in the colony as soon as they reached Pleasant Cove. Tom Jonah was just the sort of a protector the Corner House girl would have chosen under those circumstances.

But Ruth was puzzled. She had not seen Pearl Harrod, and was not sure whether Pearl had completely filled her uncle’s bungalow with guests or not. Of one thing Ruth was sure: if they went to the Overlook House (Mr. Terrence Severn’s hotel), they would pay their board and refuse to be Trix’s guests.

When the carriage came for them, Tom Jonah stood at the gate and watched them get in and drive away with a rather depressed air. Dot and Tess waved their handkerchiefs from the carriage window at him as long as they could see the big dog.

There was much confusion at the station. Many people whom the girls knew were on the platform, or in the cars already. Trix Severn was very much in evidence. The Kenway sisters saw the other girls who were going to accept Miss Severn’s hospitality in a group at one side, but they hesitated to join this party.

Trix passed the Kenways twice and did not even look at them. Of course, she knew the sisters were there, but Ruth believed that the mean-spirited girl merely wished them to speak to her so that she could snub them publicly.

“Well, Ruthie Kenway!” exclaimed a voice suddenly behind the Corner House girls.

It was Pearl Harrod. Pearl was a bright-faced, big girl, jovial and kind-hearted. “I’ve just been looking for you everywhere,” pursued Pearl. “Here it is the last minute, and you haven’t told me whether you and the other girls are going to my uncle’s house or not.”

“Why – if you are sure you want us?” queried Ruth, with a little break in her voice.

“I should say yes!” exclaimed Pearl. “But I was afraid you had been asked by some one else.”

Trix turned and looked the four sisters over scornfully. Then she tossed her head. “Waiting like beggars for an invitation from somebody,” she said, loudly enough for all the girls nearby to hear. “You’d think, if those Corner House girls are as rich as they tell about, that they’d pay their way.”

CHAPTER VI – ON THE TRAIN

“Don’t you mind what that mean thing says,” whispered Pearl Harrod, quickly.

She had seen Ruth flush hotly and the tears spring to Agnes’ eyes when Trix Severn had spoken so ill-naturedly. The younger Corner House girls did not hear, but Ruth and Agnes were hurt to the quick.

“You are very, very kind, Pearl,” said Ruth. “But we had thought of going to the tent colony – ”

“Didn’t Trix Severn ask you to her place?” demanded Pearl, hotly. “I know she did. And now she insults you. If she hadn’t asked you first, and seemed so thick with your sister, Ruth, I would have insisted long ago that you all come to uncle’s bungalow. There’s plenty of room, for my aunt and the girls won’t be down for a fortnight.”

“But, Pearl – ”

“I’ll be mad if you don’t agree – now I know that Trix has released you, Ruth Kenway,” cried the good-hearted girl. “Now, don’t let’s say another word about it.”

“Oh, don’t be angry!” begged Ruth. “But won’t it look as though we were begging our way – as Trix says?”

“Pooh! who cares for Trix Severn?”

“You – you are very kind,” said Ruth, yielding at length.

“Then you come on. Hey, girls!” she shouted, running after her own particular friends who were climbing aboard the rear car. “I’ve gotten them to promise. The Corner House girls are going with us – for two weeks, anyway.”

At once the other girls addressed cheered and gathered the four Kenways into their group, with great rejoicing. The sting of Trix Severn’s unkindness was forgotten.

Mr. Howbridge, their guardian, came to the station to see them off, and shook hands with Ruth through the window of the car. When the train actually moved away, Neale O’Neil was there in the crowd, swinging his cap and wishing them heaps of fun. Neale expected to go to Pleasant Cove himself, later in the season.

This last car of the special train was a day coach; but the light-hearted girls did not mind the lack of conveniences and comforts to be obtained in the chair cars. The train was supposed to arrive at Pleasant Cove by three o’clock, and a five hour ride on a hot June day was only “fun” for the Corner House girls and their friends.

Ruth first of all got the brakeman to turn over a seat so that she and her three sisters could sit facing each other. Mrs. MacCall had put them up a nice hamper of luncheon and the older girl knew this would be better enjoyed if the seats were thus arranged.

Of course, there was the usual desire of some of the travelers to have windows open while others wished them closed. Cinders and dust flew in by the peck if the former arrangement prevailed, while the heat was intense if the sashes were down.

Tess and Dot were little disturbed by these physical ills. But they had their own worries. Dot, who had insisted on carrying the Alice-doll in her arms, was troubled mightily to remember whether she had packed the whole of the doll’s trousseau (this was supposed to be a wedding journey for the Alice-doll – a wedding journey in which the bridegroom had no part); while Tess wondered what would happen to Tom Jonah and Sandyface’s young family while they were all gone from the old Corner House.

“I feel condemned – I do, indeed, Dot,” sighed Tess. “We ought, at least, to have named those four kittens before we left. They’ll be awfully old before the christening – if we don’t come back at the end of our first two weeks.”

“What could happen to them?” demanded Dot.

“Why – croup – or measles – or chicken-pox. They’re only babies, you know. And if one should die,” added Tess, warmly, “we wouldn’t even know what name to put on its gravestone!”

“My! lots of things can happen in two weeks, I s’pose,” agreed Dot. “Do you think we ought to stay away from home so long?”

“I guess we’ll have to if Ruth and Aggie stay,” said Tess. “But I shall worry.”

Meanwhile Agnes, who sat with her back to the engine beside Ruth, had become interested in a couple sitting together not far down the car. They were strangers – and strangely dressed, as well.