Читать книгу The Corner House Girls in a Play - Hill Grace Brooks - Страница 4

Billy Bumps backed away in time to escape the vigorous blow Neale O'Neil aimed at him with the stick he had picked up. But the old goat had managed to tear loose some of the hair on one side of the odd, old fellow's head, and now stood contemplating the angry and excited Sprague, with the hair hanging out of his mouth and mingling with his own long beard.

"Shorn of my locks! shorn of my locks! Samson has lost his glory and strength – yea, verily!" cried the owner of the hair, mournfully. "Yea, how hath the mighty fallen and the people imagined a vain thing! And if there were anything here hard enough to throw at that old goat!"

Thus getting down to a more practical and modern form of language, Seneca Sprague looked wrathfully around for a club or a rock, nothing less being sufficiently hard to suit him.

"Oh, you mustn't!" cried Dot. "Poor Billy Bumps doesn't know any better. Why, once he chewed up my Alice-doll's best dress. And I didn't hit him for it!"

A comparison of a doll's dress with his own hair did not please Mr. Sprague much. He shook his now ragged head, from which the lock of hair had been torn so roughly. Billy Bumps considered this a challenge and, lowering his horns, suddenly charged the despoiled prophet.

"Drat the beast!" yelled Seneca, forgetting his Scriptural language entirely; and leaped into the air just in time to make a passage for Billy Bumps between his long legs.

Neale, for laughter, could not help.

Slam! went Billy's horns against the end of the hen-house. Mr. Sprague was not there to catch the goat on the rebound, for, leaving his bag of apples, he rushed for the side gate and got out upon Willow Street without much regard for the order of his going, voicing prophecies this time that had only to do with Billy Bumps' immediate future.

The disturbance brought Ruth and Agnes running from the house, but only in time to see the wrathful Seneca Sprague, his linen duster flapping behind him, as he disappeared along Willow Street. When Ruth heard about Billy Bumps' banquet, she sent the bag of apples to Seneca Sprague's little shanty which he occupied, down on the river dock.

"Of all the ridiculous things a goat ever did, that is the most ridiculous!" exclaimed Agnes.

"There's more than one hair in the butter this time," repeated Neale O'Neil, with laughter.

"I can't laugh, even at that stale joke," sighed Agnes.

"What's the matter, Aggie?" demanded Neale. "Have you soured on the world completely?"

"I feel as though I had," confessed Agnes, her sweet eyes vastly troubled and her red lips in a pout. "What do you think, Neale?"

"A whole lot of things," returned the boy. "What do you want me to think?"

"Mr. Smartie! But tell me: Have you heard anything about our basket ball team being set back? Eva told me she'd heard Mr. Marks was dreadfully displeased at something we'd done and that he said we shouldn't win the pennant."

"Not win the pennant?" cried Neale, aghast. "Why, you girls have got it cinched!"

"Not if Mr. Marks declares all the games we won last spring forfeited. I think he's too, too mean!" cried Agnes.

"Oh, he wouldn't do that!" urged Neale.

"She says he is going to."

"Eva Larry doesn't always get things straight," said Neale, comfortingly. "But what does he do it for?"

"I don't know. I'm sure I haven't done anything."

"Of course not!" chuckled her boy friend, looking at her rather roguishly. "Who was it proposed that raid on old Buckham's strawberry patch that time, coming home from Fleeting?"

"Oh! he couldn't know about that," cried Agnes, actually turning pale at the suggestion.

"I don't know," Neale said slowly. "Trix Severn was in your crowd then, and she'd tell anything if she got mad."

"And she's mad all right," groaned Agnes.

"I believe she is – with you Corner House girls," added Neale O'Neil.

"She'd be telling on herself – the mean thing!" snapped Agnes.

"But she is not on the team. She was along only as a rooter. The electric car broke down alongside of Buckham's strawberry patch. Wasn't that it?"

"Uh-huh," admitted Agnes. "And the berries did look so tempting."

"You girls got into Buckham's best berries," chuckled Neale. "I heard he was quite wild about it."

"We didn't take many. And I really didn't think about it's being stealing," Agnes said slowly. "We just did it for a lark."

"Of course. 'Didn't mean to' is an old excuse," retorted the boy.

"Well, Mr. Buckham couldn't have known about it then," cried Agnes. "I don't believe Mr. Marks heard of it through him. If he had, why not before this time, after months have gone by?"

"I know. It's all blown over and forgotten, when up it pops again. 'Murder will out,' they say. But you girls only murdered a few strawberries. It looks to me," added Neale O'Neil, "as though somebody was trying to get square."

"Get square with whom?" demanded Agnes.

"Well – you were all in it, weren't you?"

"All the team?"

"Yes."

"I suppose so. But Trix and some of the others picked and ate quite as many berries as we did. The girls that went over to Fleeting to root for us were all in it, too."

"I know," Neale said. "If the farmer had been sure who you were, or any of the electric car men had told – Had the car all to yourselves, didn't you?"

"We girls were the only passengers," said Agnes.

"Then make up your mind to it," the wise Neale rejoined, "that if Mr. Marks has only recently been told of the raid, some girl has been blabbing. The farmer or the conductor or the motorman would have told at once. They wouldn't have waited until three months and more had passed."

"Oh dear, Neale! do you think that?"

"It looks just like a mean girl's trick. Some telltale," returned the boy, in disgust.

"Trix Severn might do it, I s'pose, because she doesn't like me any more."

"You remember what Mr. Marks told us all last spring when we grammar grade fellows were let into the high school athletics? He said that one's conduct outside of school would govern the amount of latitude he would allow us in school athletics. I guess he meant you girls, too."

"He's an awfully strict old thing!" complained Agnes.

"They tell me," pursued Neale O'Neil, "that once a part of the baseball nine played hookey to go swimming at Ryer's Ford, and Mr. Marks immediately forfeited all the games in the Inter-scholastic League for that year, and so punished the whole school."

"That's not fair!" exploded Agnes.

"I don't know whether it is or not. But I know the baseball captain this year was mighty strict with us fellows."

The topic of the promised punishment of the basket ball team for an old offense was discussed almost as much at the Corner House that evening as was the "lady in gray" and the sovereigns of England.

Tess kept these last subjects alive, for she was studying the rhyme and would try to recite it to everybody that would listen – including Linda, who scarcely understood ten words of English, and Sandyface and her family, gathered for their supper in the woodshed. Tess was troubled about the closing of the Women's and Children's Hospital, because of its effect upon Mrs. Eland, too.

I do hope," ruminated Tess, "that that poor Mrs. Eland won't be turned out of her place. Don't you hope so, Ruthie?"

"I am sure it would be a calamity if the hospital were closed," agreed the older sister. "And the matron must be a very lovely lady, as you say, Tess."

"She is awfully nice – isn't she, Dot?" pursued Tess, who usually expected the support of Dorothy.

"Just as nice as she can be," agreed the smallest Corner House girl. "Couldn't she come to live in our house if she can't stay in the horsepistol any longer?"

"At the what, child?" gasped Agnes. "What is it you said?"

"Well – where she lives now," Dot responded, dodging the doubtful word.

"Goodness, dear!" laughed Ruth, "we can't make the old Corner House a refuge for destitute females."

"I don't care!" spoke up Dot, quickly. "Didn't they make the Toomey-Smith house, on High Street into a home for indignant old maids?"

At that the older girls shouted with laughter. "'In-di-gent' – 'in-di-gent'! child," corrected Agnes, at last. "That means without means – poor – unable to care for themselves. 'Indignant old maids,' indeed!"

"Maybe they were indignant," suggested Tess, too tender hearted to see Dot's ignorance exposed in public, despite her own private criticism of the little one's misuse of the English language. "See how indignant Aunt Sarah is – and she's an old maid."

This amused Ruth and Agnes even more than Dot's observation. It was true that Aunt Sarah Maltby was frequently "an indignant old maid."

But Tess endured the laughter calmly. She was deeply interested in the problem of Mrs. Eland's future, and she said:

"Maybe Uncle Peter ought to have left the hospital some of his money when he died, instead of leaving it all to us and to Aunt Sarah."

"Do you want to give up some of your monthly allowance to help support the hospital, Tess?" demanded Ruth, briskly.

"I – I – Well, I couldn't give much," said the smaller girl, seriously, "for a part of it goes to missions and the Sunday School money box, and part to Sadie Goronofsky's cousin who has a nawful bad felon, and can't work on the paper flowers just now – "

"Why, child!" the oldest Kenway said, with a tender smile, and putting her hand lightly on Tess' head, "I didn't know about that. How much of your pin money goes each month to charity already? You only have a dollar and a half."

"I – I keep half a dollar for myself," confessed Tess. "I could give part of that to the hospital."

"I'll give some of my pin money, too," announced Dot, gravely, "if it will keep Mrs. Eland from being turned out of the horsepistol."

Ruth and Agnes did not chide the little one for her mispronunciation of the hard word this time, but they looked at each other seriously. "I wonder if Uncle Peter was one of those rich people who should have remembered the institution in his will?" Ruth said.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Agnes. "If we go around hunting for duties Uncle Peter Stower left undone, and do them for him, where will we be? There will be no money left for ourselves."

"You need not be afraid," Ruth said, with a smile. "Mr. Howbridge will not let us use our money foolishly. He is answerable for every penny of it to the Court. But maybe he will approve of our giving a proper sum towards a fund for keeping the Women's and Children's Hospital open."

"Is there such a fund?" demanded Agnes.

"There will be, I think. If everybody is interested – "

"And how you going to interest 'em?" asked the skeptical Agnes.

"Talk about it! Publicity! That is what is needed," declared Ruth, vigorously. "Why! we might all do something."

"Who – all? I want to know!" responded her sister. "I don't have a cent more than I need for myself. Only two dollars and a half." Agnes' allowance had been recently increased half a dollar by the observant lawyer.

"All of us can help," said Ruth. "Boys and girls alike, as well as grown people. The schools ought to do something to raise money for the hospital's support."

"Like a fair, maybe – or a bazaar," cried Agnes, eagerly. "That ought to be fun."

"You are always looking for fun," said Ruth.

"I don't care. If we can combine business with pleasure, so much the better," laughed Agnes. "It's easier to do things that are amusing than those that are dead serious."

"There you go!" sighed Ruth. "You are becoming the slangiest girl. I believe you get it all from Neale O'Neil."

"Poor Neale!" sniffed Agnes, regretfully. "He gets blamed for all my sins and his own, too. If I had a wooden arm, Ruth, you'd say I caught it of him, you detest boys so."

Part of this conversation between her older sisters must have made a deep impression on Tess Kenway's mind. She went forth as an apostle for the Women's and Children's Hospital, and for Mrs. Eland in particular. She said to Mr. Stetson, their groceryman, the next morning, with profound gravity:

"Do you know, Mr. Stetson, that the Women's and Children's Hospital has got to be closed?"

"Why, no, Tess – is that so?" he said, staring at her. "What for?"

"Because there is no money to pay Mrs. Eland. And now she won't have any home."

"Mrs. Eland?"

"The matron, you know. And she's such a nice lady," pursued Tess. "She taught me the sovereigns of England."

Mr. Stetson might have laughed. He was frequently vastly amused by the queer sayings and doings of the two youngest Corner House girls, as he often told his wife and Myra. But on this occasion Tess was so serious that to laugh at her would have hurt her feelings. Mr. Stetson expressed his regret regarding the calamity which had overtaken Mrs. Eland and the hospital. He had never thought of the institution before, and said to his wife that he supposed they "might spare a trifle toward such a good cause."

Tess carried her tale of woe into another part of the town when she and Dot went with their dolls to call on Mrs. Kranz and Maria Maroni, on Meadow Street, where the Stower tenement property was located.

"Did you know about the Women's and Children's Hospital being shut up, Mrs. Kranz?" Tess asked that huge woman, who kept the neatest and cleanest of delicatessen and grocery stores possible. "And Mrs. Eland can't stay there."

"Ach! you dond't tell me!" exclaimed the German woman. "Ist dodt so? And vor vy do dey close de hospital yedt? Aind't it a goot vun?"

"I think it must be a very good one," Tess said soberly, "for Mrs. Eland is an awfully nice lady, and she is the matron. She taught me the sovereigns of England. I'll recite them for you." This she proceeded to do.

"Very goot! very goot!" announced Mrs. Kranz. "Maria can't say that yedt."

Maria Maroni, the very pretty Italian girl (she was about Agnes' age) who helped Mrs. Kranz in the store, laughed good-naturedly. "I guess I knew them once," she said. "But I have forgotten. I never like any history but 'Merican history, and that of Italy."

"Ach! you foreigners are all alike," Mrs. Kranz protested, considering herself a bred-in-the-bone American, having lived in the country so long.

Although she was scolding her brisk and pretty little assistant most of the time, she really loved Maria Maroni very dearly. Maria's mother and father – with their fast growing family – lived in the cellar of the same building in which was Mrs. Kranz's shop. Joe Maroni, as was shown by the home-made sign at the cellar door, sold

ISE COLE WOOD VGERTABLS

and was a smiling, voluble Italian, in a velveteen suit and cap, with gold rings in his ears, who never set his bright, black eyes upon one of the Corner House girls but he immediately filled a basket with his choicest fruit as a gift for "da leetla padrona," as he called Ruth Kenway. He had an offering ready for Tess and Dot to take home when they reappeared from Mrs. Kranz's back parlor.

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Maroni," Tess said, while Dot allowed one of the smaller Maronis to hold the Alice-doll for a blissful minute. "I know Ruthie will be delighted."

"Si! si! dee-lighted!" exclaimed Joe, showing all his very white teeth under his brigand's mustache. "The leetla T'eressa ees seek?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Maroni!" denied Tess, with a sigh. "I am very well. But I feel very bad in my mind. They are going to close the Women's and Children's Hospital and my friend, Mrs. Eland, who is the matron, will have no place to go."

Joe looked a little puzzled, for although Maria and some of her brothers and sisters went to school, their father did not understand or speak English very well. Tess patiently explained about the good work the hospital did and why Mrs. Eland was in danger of losing her position.

"Too bad-a! si! si!" ejaculated the sympathetic Italian. "We mak-a da good mon' now. We geev somet'ing to da hospital for da poor leetla children —si! si!"

"Oh, will you, Mr. Maroni?" cried Tess. "Ruth says there ought to be a fund started for the hospital. I'll tell her you'll give to it."

"Sure! you tell-a leetla padrona. Joe geeve – sure!"

"Oh, Dot! we can int'rest lots of folks – just as Ruth said," Tess declared, as the two little girls wended their way homeward. "We'll talk to everybody we know about the hospital and Mrs. Eland."

To this end Tess even opened the subject with Uncle Rufus' daughter, Petunia Blossom, who chanced to be at the old Corner House when Tess and Dot arrived, delivering the clothes which she washed each week for the Kenways.

Petunia Blossom was an immensely fat negress – and most awfully black. Uncle Rufus often said: "How come Pechunia so brack is de mysteriest mystery dat evah was. She done favah none o' ma folkses, nor her mammy's. She harks back t' some ol' antsistah dat was suttenly mighty brack – yaas'm!"

"I dunno as I kin spar' anyt'ing fo' dis hospital, honey," Petunia said, seriously, when Tess broached the subject. "It's a-costin' me a lot t' keep up ma dues wid de Daughters of Miriam."

"What's the Daughters of Miriam, Petunia?" asked Agnes, who chanced to overhear this conversation on the back porch. "Is it a lodge?"

"Hit's mo' dan a lodge, Miss Aggie," proclaimed Petunia, with pride. "It's a beneficial ordah – yaas'm!"

"And what benefit do you derive from it?" queried Agnes.

"Why, I doesn't git nottin' f'om it yet awhile, honey," said Petunia, unctiously. "But w'en I's daid, I gits one hunderd an' fifty dollahs. Same time, dey's 'bleeged t' tend ma funeral."

"Dat brack woman suah is a flickaty female," grumbled Uncle Rufus, when he heard Agnes repeating the story of Petunia's "benefit" to the family at dinner that night. When nobody but the immediate family was present at table, Uncle Rufus assumed the privilege of discussing matters with the girls. "She's allus wastin' her money on sech things. Dere, she has got t' die t' git her benefit out'n dem Daughters of Miriam. She's mighty flickaty."

"What does 'flickaty' mean, Uncle Rufus, if you please?" asked Dot, hearing a new word, and rather liking the sound of it.

"Why, chile, dat jes' mean flickaty– das all," returned the old butler, chuckling. "Dah ain't nottin' in de langwidge what kin explanify dat wo'd. Nor dah ain't no woman, brack or w'ite, mo' flickaty dan dat same Pechunia Blossom."