Nevertheless, Sammy appreciated the fact that he was included in Ruth's invitation and could bring his books over to the Corner House sitting-room where the girls and Neale O'Neil were wont to study almost every week-day night during the school year.
Neale usually took supper at the Corner House on Saturday evenings and, considering the way he came back from the shopping expedition laden with bundles, he certainly deserved something for "the inner man," as he himself expressed it. A truly New England Saturday night supper was almost always served by Mrs. MacCall baked beans, brown bread and codfish cakes.
And pudding! Mrs. MacCall was famous for her "whangdoodle pudding and lallygag sauce" a title she had given once to cottage pudding and its accompanying dressing to satisfy little folks' teasing questions as to "what is that?" Neale O'Neil was very fond of this delicacy.
As he passed his plate for a second helping on this occasion he quoted with becoming reverence: "The woman that maketh a good pudding is better than a tart reply."
"But Mrs. Adams made a tart once," observed Dot seriously, "and instead of sifting powdered sugar on it she got hold of her sand-shaker, and when she gave Margaret Pease and me each a piece it gritted our teeth so we couldn't eat it. So then," concluded Dot, "she found out what she had done."
"If she'd given it to Sammy Pinkney," Tess said morosely, "I guess he'd have eaten it right down and never said a word. I saw him drop his bread and butter and 'lasses on the ground once, and he picked it right up and ate it. He said the ground was clean!"
"No wonder Sammy's such a gritty little chap," chuckled Neale.
"Well," Mrs. MacCall said cheerfully, and with her usual optimism, "it's an old saying that everybody has to eat a peck of dirt before he dies."
"So 'tis, Mrs. MacCall," Aunt Sarah rejoined from her end of the table, and with a scornful sniff. "But I want to know whose dirt I'm eating. That Sammy Pinkney is nothing but a little animal."
This puzzled Dot somewhat, and she whispered to Ruth: "Ruthie, are good little boys, then, vegetables!"
"No, dear," the elder sister said, smiling while the others laughed. "Both bad little boys and good little boys, as well as girls, are human beings."
"And," said Tess soberly, trying to recall something she had learned in the past, "there isn't any difference between bad girls and bad boys, only the boys are of the male sex and the girls are of the feline sex."
At that statement there was a burst of laughter.
"You certainly said something that time, Tess," declared Neale. "For if there is anything more feline than a girl that's mad "
"Nothing like that, Neale O'Neil," interrupted Agnes quickly. "You would better sing pretty small, young man. Remember you are outnumbered."
"Yes," said Tess sedately, "you haven't even Sammy here now to take your part, you know, Neale."
"True for you, Tessie," agreed Neale. "I am in an infinitesimal minority."
Dot's eyes opened wide as these long words sounded from the boy's lips, and she gulped just as though she were swallowing them down for digestion. Agnes' eyes twinkled as she asked the smallest girl:
"Did you get those two, honey?"
"Don't make fun of her," admonished Ruth, aside.
"Well," sighed Dot, soberly, "I do hope I'll get into big words in the reading book this next term. I love 'em. Why! Tess is awfully far ahead of me; she can spell words in four cylinders!"
And that closed the evening meal with a round of laughter that Dot did not understand.
CHAPTER V
THE SHEPARDS
"Just think!" Agnes said to Ruth. "For the first time since we came to live at the old Corner House and call it our owniest own, we are going to have real visitors. Oh, dear, me, Ruth, I wish we could have week-end parties, and dances, and all sorts of society things. I do!"
"Mercy, Agnes! And you with your hair in plaits?"
"Whose fault is that, I'd like to know," responded the beauty a bit sharply. "I'm the only girl in my set who doesn't put her hair up. Myra Stetson has worn hers up for a year "
"She keeps house for her father and has not attended school for six months," Ruth reminded her.
"Well, Eva Larry puts hers up when her mother has company. And Pearl Howard "
"Never mind the catalog of your friends, dear," put in Ruth, quietly. "We know you are a much abused little girl. But your hair in plaits you'd better wear for a while yet.
"As for week-end parties and the like, I will speak to Mr. Howbridge and perhaps we can give some parties this winter."
"With the kids in them!" grumbled Agnes. "I want real grown-up parties."
"Let us wait till we are really grown up for them," and the elder sister laughed.
"Goodness! you are grown up enough, Ruth Kenway," Agnes declared. "You might be married at your age. Mrs. Mac says she was."
"Hush!" exclaimed Ruth, almost shocked by such a suggestion. "You do get the most peculiar ideas in your head, Aggie."
"There's nothing peculiar about marrying," said the other girl saucily. "I'm sure everybody's 'doing it.' It's quite the proper thing. You know, as the smallest member of the catechism class replied to the question: 'What is the chief end of woman?' 'Marriage!' And 'tis, too," concluded the positive Agnes.
"Do talk sensibly. But to return. Cecile and her brother visiting us is really the first time we'll have entertained guests save Mrs. Treble and "
"Oh, Mrs. Trouble and Double Trouble, or Barnabetta Scruggs and her father, don't count," Agnes hastened to say. "They were only people we took in. But the Shepards are real guests. And I'm so glad you decided upon giving them two of the big front rooms, Ruthie. Those guest rooms that Uncle Peter had shut up for so many years are just beautiful. There aren't such great rooms, or such splendid old furniture in Milton, as we have."
"We have much to be thankful for," said Ruth placidly.
"We've a lot to be proud of," amended Agnes. "And our auto! My! Think of us poor little miserable Kenways cutting such a dash."
"And yet you were just now longing for more nice things," pointed out Ruth.
"That's my fatal ambition," sighed her sister. "I am a female No! A feline as Tess says Napoleon. I long for more worlds to conquer like Alexander. I dream of great things like Sir Humphrey Davy and Newton. I "
"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."
At this there was a burst of uncontrollable laughter.
The little girls were fond of Luke Shepard, however. He had been very nice to them on that adventurous occasion when they had met him and his sister on the automobile tour; and on coming to the old Corner House for this visit he had not forgotten Tess and Dot. To the former he had brought a lovely, imaginative, beautifully bound story book, "full of gods and gondolas," Dot said with awe.
To Dot herself he most tactfully presented a doll. Not a doll to take the place in any way of the beloved Alice-doll. No. Luke was too wise a youth for that. But it was a new baby nevertheless that Dot was bound to be proud of.
"Oh," cried Tess, "a boy baby, Dot! And you never had a real boy baby before!"
"Or such a nice looking one, at any rate," Agnes suggested.
Dot, smiling "big," clasped the manly looking little manikin in its neat sailor suit and cap. She really was too pleased for speech for a minute or two. Then she said: