Читать книгу The Corner House Girls Solve a Mystery - Grace Brooks Hill - Страница 3

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“Hello!”

“Goodness sakes! don’t holler like that again, Sammy Pinkney.”

“He almost made me drop the cake batter!”

Tess Kenway, who had administered the rebuke to the small boy when he gave a shout, thrusting his head in through the half-opened kitchen door, fanned herself with her apron as she closed the oven of the stove. Her sister Dot, who was pouring something from a brown bowl into a tin pan, set the former down on the table and shook her finger at Sammy.

“What are you doin’?” asked Sammy, as he slid farther into the kitchen and possessed himself of a chair near the table, looking casually over what it contained.

“Cakes,” answered Tess. “I guess the oven’s hot enough now, Dot,” she went on, again opening and closing the door.

“Cakes!” exclaimed Sammy, smacking his lips. “I should think if you made one cake it would be——”

“We’re each making a cake, if you please!” declared Tess, with a superior air. “And we wish you wouldn’t come around here bothering us—don’t we, Dot?”

“Yes, we do,” joined in the other small sister.

“And if you want any of my cake, Sammy Pinkney—Oh, don’t you dare sit in that chair!” she shrieked as, dropping a spoon covered with cake batter and thereby spattering the boy, she made a rush for him just in time to prevent him from occupying another chair nearer to the scene of the cake-making.

“What’s the matter with that chair?” protested Sammy, in a grieved tone, as he went back to his original place.

“My—my Alice-doll!” answered Dot faintly.

“You—you nearly squashed her, Sammy.” And, pulling the chair out from beneath the table, she disclosed her very choicest child—the loved “Alice-doll.”

“Aw, how’d I know she was there?” asked Sammy.

“You didn’t have to come in,” retorted Tess, who, though older than her sister, yet shared in the latter’s love for Alice and did not want to see her “squashed.”

“Pooh, I don’t have to come in if I don’t want to,” declared Sammy independently. “But I was goin’ to show you how you could have some fun.”

“Some fun?” questioned Tess, alive to the possibilities in that word.

“What kind of fun?” Dot wanted to know, putting her Alice-doll in a safer place.

“Aw, what good would it do me to tell you!” and Sammy affected an air of injured innocence. “All you care about is bakin’ cakes!”

“We do not—so there!” cried Tess, with an uptilting of her little nose, as she had seen Nalbro Hastings affect on occasions. “If you know any fun, Sammy Pinkney, you ought to tell us, ’cause we’ll soon have to go back to school.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Dot. “When I was on Plam Island I never thought of school.”

“’Tisn’t Plam Island,” corrected Sammy. “It’s——”

“I know what it is! I don’t have to get you to tell me!” snapped Dot, for she was a bit sensitive about her mispronunciation, having been corrected so often. “But when my cake’s done you can have some, Sammy,” she added, more gently, as if ashamed of her little outburst.

“And I’ll give you some of mine,” offered Tess. “It’s going to be chocolate.”

“Good!” cried Sammy, and all his ill-feeling vanished.

“Mine’s cocoanut,” said Dot. “And I guess we’d better put ’em in the oven, Tess. Mrs. MacCall said to put ’em in when the oven felt hot to your hand.”

“All right.”

The two little girls, having poured their cake batter into separate tins, placed their concoctions in the oven and closed the door.

“There!” announced Tess. “Now you can tell us about the fun, Sammy,” and she seemed to have shaken from her small shoulders the cares of the universe.

“I’m going to be in it, and so is my Alice-doll!” declared Dot, as she brought the pretend-child from the shelf where she had placed her for safety.

“Is Mrs. Mac around?” asked Sammy suspiciously, for he was a bit afraid of the bluff but kind Scotch housekeeper.

“No, she’s away upstairs,” answered Tess encouragingly. “She won’t be down for a long time. She and Ruth and Agnes are talking about doing over one of the rooms. That girl who had something the matter with her teeth is coming to stay a while.”

“We’re going to have a party,” confided Dot. “But these cakes aren’t for that,” she hastened to say, lest Sammy might think he would have to wait too long for the promised reward.

“You mean that that Nally Hastings you’re always talking about is coming?” asked the boy.

“Yes!” answered both little girls. They did not want to talk too much for they desired to hear what fun Sammy had in prospect.

Miss Nalbro Hastings, from Boston, had become acquainted with the Corner House girls some time before. At first she had had the reputation of being affected and “stuck up,” especially in the manner of her talk.

But later it was learned that she was suffering from the loss of some teeth, which had been knocked out in a runaway-horse accident, and this accounted for her speaking of Neale O’Neil as:

“That charming Mistah O’Neil, who ith tho interethting!”

“Well, if Mrs. Mac isn’t around,” began Sammy slowly—“But where’s your Aunt Sarah?” he suddenly demanded, for he had sharp recollections of how Miss Maltby had more than once sent him “a-kiting,” as she called it, when he had been up to some of his mischief.

“Oh, Aunt Sarah has gone for a ride,” chuckled Tess. “You can tell us, Sammy. But we’ve got to stay in the kitchen until our cakes are done,” she added, lest Sammy’s plan involve going afield with the cake batter still in the oven.

“Oh, we can have some of the fun right here,” replied Sammy. “I guess this is the best place for it, anyhow. You sure Mrs. Mac won’t come down and catch me?” he asked, looking about and cocking his head on one side, to listen more sharply.

“No, she and Agnes and Ruth just went upstairs,” reported Tess. “They’ll be there a long time. Mrs. Mac got the things for us to make the cakes and told us just how to do it. I’ve made a cake before, but Dot hasn’t,” and Tess assumed her superior air which moved Dot to exclaim:

“Well, I’ve eaten cakes, anyhow!”

“So’ve I!” chuckled Sammy. “And I’m ready to do it again. Well, if nobody’s coming I’ll show you the fun. Got any raw beefsteak?” he asked, suddenly.

“Raw beefsteak?” questioned Dot, wonderingly.

“Sammy Pinkney, have you got a new dog?” demanded Tess, excitedly. “If you have——”

“Naw, I haven’t got a new dog,” declared Sammy. “Maybe I’m goin’ to have one, though, for Robbie Foote, who delivers groceries for Mrs. Kranz, the delicatessen lady, says he thinks he knows where he can get me a dog if my mother’ll let me have it. But I don’t guess she will as long as I have Buster.”

“I should think not,” said Tess, with an air of motherly wisdom.

“But a dog is nice,” said Dot. “And if you had one with a very soft and shaggy back, Sammy, I’d let my Alice-doll ride on him. Buster’s only a bulldog and not at all nice. He’s really horrid!” and Dot sniffed a little.

“Well, I haven’t got the dog—yet,” Sammy said.

“Then what do you want the raw beefsteak for?” demanded Tess.

“For the alligator,” whispered Sammy, as if he feared that Mrs. MacCall, the Scotch housekeeper, would hear him, even on the top floor of the old and rambling Corner House.

“The alligator!” cried Tess.

“The one we brought you from Plam Island?” demanded Dot.

“’Tisn’t Plam Island, I tell you!” insisted Sammy. “It’s Palm, and——”

“I call it Plam,” remarked Dot sweetly and with an air of finality. “But where is he, Sammy—the alligator I mean? He was so cute, even if he was homely.”

“I have him outside,” Sammy answered. “I didn’t want to bring him in until I was sure it was all right. That’s the reason I looked in first and said ‘hello!’”

“And nearly made me drop my cake,” sighed Dot.

“But what about the raw beefsteak?” asked Tess.

“That’s to make the alligator do the trick,” explained Sammy.

“What trick?” cried both little girls at once.

“I’ll show you.”

Sammy went outside again. Tess and Dot were so eager they could scarcely await his return, but it was not many minutes before Sammy again made his appearance with a small box which he put on the kitchen table, shoving to one side spoons, pans and dishes that had been used with prodigal extravagance in the making of two very small cakes.

“Get the beefsteak,” Sammy ordered, with an air of one used to being obeyed.

“I’ll get it. There’s some in the ice box,” offered Tess. “But don’t do the trick until I get back,” she commanded.

“I won’t,” Sammy promised.

While Tess went to the pantry Dot knelt in a chair as close to the mysterious box as she could get.

“Let me just peek at him until Tess comes back,” she pleaded. “You don’t need do the trick.”

Sammy obligingly raised the cover of the box slightly.

“Oh, Sammy Pinkney, what have you done to the lovely alligator?” cried Dot, starting back.

“Keep still! It’s part of the trick,” answered Sammy.

“Oh, you said you wouldn’t do it while I was gone!” cried Tess accusingly, as she came in with some shreds of meat and heard the last words.

“I didn’t,” declared Sammy. “I was just showing him to Dot. I’ll lift him out now. Put the meat on the table.”

“I haggled off one end of a steak,” said Tess. “I hope Mrs. Mac doesn’t notice it.”

“If she does,” chuckled Sammy, “tell her one of the cats did it.”

“There’s plenty of them around, but of course Dot and I don’t tell fibs,” declared Tess. “Now come on. Do the trick, Sammy.”

Sammy looked matters over before opening the box. The shreds of meat that Tess had placed on the table caught his eyes.

“Don’t leave ’em in such big chunks,” he advised. “Snapper will choke on ’em.”

“Is that what you call your alligator—Snapper?” asked Tess, as she proceeded to cut up the meat into smaller bits. She and her sisters had brought the scaly reptile back with them from Palm Island as a souvenir for Sammy.

“Snapper is his name, and my mother says snappish is his nature,” answered the boy. “But he only snaps when he wants things to eat. I guess those are all right,” he went on, as he looked at the bits of steak cut smaller by Tess.

Then he lifted out onto the table a small, tame alligator, at the sight of which the two girls broke into exclamations of:

“Oh, isn’t he cute! How did you ever do it! Oh, he looks just like a circus alligator!”

“Maybe I’ll put him in a circus,” said Sammy. “But it wasn’t easy to dress him up.”

Sammy had, with the expenditure of much time and (for him) labor, made a sort of clown suit for the alligator, a little red jacket and green trousers. The two front legs of the small alligator were thrust through the sleeves of the red jacket, and the two hind legs stuck out of the green legs of the trousers.

“Oh, he’s too funny for anything!” declared Dot.

“Wait! You haven’t seen half yet!” promised the boy.

Again he reached into the box he had carried over from his home, which was catercornered from the Corner House, and this time he lifted out a small wagon, purchased at the five and ten-cent store. To this vehicle he had fastened a harness so that Snapper could be hitched to the toy.

“Oh, isn’t that a darling!” cried Tess in ecstasy.

“You could have a show with that!” declared Dot.

“Maybe I will,” said Sammy. “But wait, you haven’t seen it all yet. Wait till he draws the cart. Keep the meat away from him until I hitch him up,” he went on. “Once he starts to eating raw steak he won’t pull. I have to bribe him to do it till he gets better trained. Don’t let him get the meat, Tess.”

At what, it would seem, was the risk of having her fingers snapped at, the girl removed the bits of meat from in front of the little alligator. Sammy then hitched it to the cart and next, taking a shred of meat, held it a few inches away from Snapper’s nose.

Slowly the alligator from “Plam Island” began crawling across the table, anxious to get the dainty, and, as he crawled, he hauled after him the toy cart.

“Oh, that’s perfectly wonderful!” cried Tess.

“Too cute for anything!” added Dot. “Look, Alice-doll,” she went on, holding her most-loved “child” up to see.

“Aw, what does she know about it?” jeered Sammy.

“My Alice-doll knows more’n you do, Sammy Pinkney, so there!” retorted Dot.

Just then there was a noise at the outer kitchen door, and the three children turned apprehensively, thinking it might be their Aunt Sarah or Mrs. MacCall.

“It’s only Billy Bumps,” remarked Sammy, as he caught sight of the goat entering. Billy was a sort of privileged neighborhood character, but had Mrs. MacCall been present he never would have entered her clean kitchen. However, Sammy, Dot and Tess were not so particular. Besides, they were watching the alligator do his trick with the little cart.

But peace and quiet was not to reign for long. Billy Bumps, discovering on a small table in a corner a bit of lettuce, began munching this. His tail was toward the larger table, on which Snapper was performing, and, as luck would have it, just then the alligator in his wanderings came to the edge of the table. The goat’s slightly moving tail was within easy reach of the jaws.

Perhaps Snapper might have recognized in the goat’s tail a resemblance to some dainty he was accustomed to feed on while a resident of Palm Island. Or perhaps Snapper took the goat’s tail for a new form of beefsteak, of which he was very fond.

However that may be, this is what happened.

Snapper reached forward and, aiming to bite out a generous section of the goat’s tail, took a firm hold.

“Baa-a-a-a!” bleated the goat.

He wheeled around suddenly, and with such force that he swung Snapper from the table to the floor, the alligator loosening its grip. But Billy Bumps had been frightened. He also thought he had been mistreated. With another bleat, in which rage and reproach were mingled, he made a dash for the door by which he had entered.

Just as he reached it there entered Robbie Foote with some eggs that Mrs. Kranz, the “delicatessen lady,” had sent up to the Corner House from her store.

“Oh!” gasped Robbie. And again: “Oh!”

Well might he say that, for the plunging goat took him in the stomach and down went Robbie.

Down went the eggs also, in a smash of shells, whites and yellows on the kitchen floor, and Snapper the alligator, wondering what it was all about, started to crawl through the mess.

“Oh,” gasped Tess faintly.

“Oh dear!” cried Dot, more loudly.

“This—this—this is fierce!” stuttered Sammy, gazing wildly at the scene of wreck and confusion.