The Corner House Girls in a Play - Grace Hill 2 стр.

"Oh, would you?" cried Tess, her pretty face lighting up as she gazed admiringly again at the woman in the gray cloak.

"Yes. And we will add a couplet or two at the end to bring the list down to date for there have been two more sovereigns since the good Queen Victoria passed away. Now attend! Here is the rhyme. I will recite it for you, and then I will write it down and you may learn it at your leisure."

Both Tess and Dot and of course the Alice-doll were very attentive as the lady recited:

There you have it with an original four lines at the end to complete the list," laughed the lady.

Dot's eyes were big; she had lost the sense of the rhyme long before; but Tess was very earnest. "I I believe I could learn 'em that way," she confessed. "I can remember poetry quite well. Can't I, Dot?"

"You recite 'Little Drops of Water, Little Grains of Sand' beautifully," said the smallest Corner House girl, loyally.

"Of course you can learn it," said the lady, confidently. "Now, Tess is that your name Theresa?"

"Yes, ma'am only almost nobody ever calls me by it all. Miss Andrews used to when she was very, very angry. But I hope my new teacher, Miss Pepperill, won't be angry with me at all if I can only learn these sovereigns."

"You shall," declared the lady in gray. "I have a pencil here in my bag. And here is a piece of paper. I will write it all out for you and you can study it from now until the day school opens. Then, when this Miss Pepperill demands it, you will have it pat right on the end of your tongue."

"I hope so," said Tess, with dawning cheerfulness.

I believe I can learn to recite it all if you are kind enough to write it down."

The lady did so, writing the lines in a beautiful, round hand, and so plain that even Dot, who was a trifle "weak" in reading anything but print, could quite easily spell out the words.

"Weren't there any more names for kings when those lived?" the youngest Kenway asked seriously.

"Why, what makes you ask that?" asked the smiling lady.

"Maybe there weren't enough to go 'round," continued the puzzled Dot. "There are so many of 'em of one name Williams, and Georges, and Edwardses. Don't English people have any more names to give to their sov-runs?"

"Sov-er-eigns," whispered Tess, sharply.

"That's what I mean," said the placid Dot. "The lady knows what I mean."

"Of course I do, dear," agreed the woman in the gray cloak. "But I expect the mothers of kings, like the mothers of other little boys, like to name their sons after their fathers.

"Now, children, I must go," she added briskly, getting up off the bench and handing Tess the written paper. "Good-bye. I hope I shall meet you both again very soon. Let me kiss you, Tess and you, Dorothy Kenway. It has done me good to know you."

She kissed both children quickly, and then set off along the Parade Ground walk. Tess and Dot bade her good-bye shrilly, turning themselves toward the old Corner House.

"Oh, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, suddenly.

"What's the matter now?" asked Dot.

"We never asked the lady her name or who she was."

"We-ell would that be perlite?" asked Dot, doubtfully.

"Yes. She asked our names. We don't know anything about her and I do think she is so nice!"

"So do I," agreed Dot. "And that gray cloak "

"With the pretty little bonnet and ruche," added Tess.

"She isn't the Salvation Army," said Dot, remembering that that order was uniformed from seeing them on the streets of Bloomingsburg, where the Kenways had lived before they had fallen heir to Uncle Peter Stower's estate.

"Of course not!" Tess cried. "And she don't look like one o' those deaconesses that came to see Ethel Mumford's mother when she was sick do you remember?"

"Of course I remember everything!" said the positive Dot. "Wasn't I a great, big girl when we came to Milton to live?"

"Why why," stammered her sister, not wishing to displease Dot, but bound to be honest. "You aren't a very big girl, even now, Dot Kenway."

"Humph!" exclaimed Dot, quite vexed. "I wear bigger shoes and stockings, and Ruth is having Miss Ann Titus let down the hems of all my old dresses a full inch so now!"

"I expect you have grown some, Dot," admitted Tess, reflectively. "But you aren't big enough even now to brag about."

The youngest Kenway might have been deeply offended by this and shown that she had taken offence, too had something new not taken her attention at the very moment she and Tess were entering the side gate of the old Corner House premises.

The house was a three story and attic mansion which was set well back from Main Street, but the side of which was separated from Willow Street by only a narrow strip of sward. The kitchen was in the wing nearest this last-named street, and there was a big, half-enclosed side porch, to which the woodshed was attached, and beyond which was the long grape arbor.

The length of the old Corner House yard, running parallel with Willow Street, was much greater than its width. The garden, summer house, henhouses, and other outbuildings were at the back. The lawn in front was well shaded, and there were plenty of fruit trees around the house. Not many dwellings in Milton had as much yard-room as the Stower homestead.

"Oh my, Tess!" gasped Dot, with deep interest, staring at the porch stoop. "Who is that and what's he doing?"

"Dear me!" returned Tess, hesitating at the gate. "That's Seneca Sprague the man who wears a linen duster and straw hat all the year round, and 'most always goes barefooted. He he isn't just right, they say, Dot."

"Just right about what?" asked Dot.

"Mercy me, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, exasperated.

"Well, what is he?" asked Dot, with vigor.

"Well I guess," said Tess, "that he thinks he is a minister. And, I do declare, I believe he's preaching to Sandyface and her kittens! Listen, Dot!"

CHAPTER III

BILLY BUMPS' BANQUET

Almost the first thing that would have caught the attention of the visitor to the old Corner House at almost any time, was the number of pets that hovered about that kitchen porch. Ruth, with a sigh, sometimes admitted that she was afraid she supported a menagerie.

Just at this hour it was approaching noon Mrs. MacCall, or the girl who helped her in the kitchen, might be expected to appear at the door with a plate of scraps or vegetable peelings or a little spare milk or other delicacy to tempt the appetites of the dumb creatures that subsisted upon the kindness of the Corner House family.

The birds, of course, got their share. In the winter the old Corner House was the rendezvous of a chattering throng of snow-buntings and sparrows and starlings, for the children tied suet and meat-bones to the branches of the fruit trees, as well as scattered crumbs upon the snow-crust. In summer the feathered beggars took toll as they pleased of the cherries and small fruits in the garden.

The birds, of course, got their share. In the winter the old Corner House was the rendezvous of a chattering throng of snow-buntings and sparrows and starlings, for the children tied suet and meat-bones to the branches of the fruit trees, as well as scattered crumbs upon the snow-crust. In summer the feathered beggars took toll as they pleased of the cherries and small fruits in the garden.

In the garden, too, was the only martin house in town, set upon a tall pole. There every spring a battle royal went on between the coming martins and the impudent sparrows, as the latter horde always appropriated the martin house during the absence of its proper owners in the South. Each cherry tree had its robin's nest sometimes two. Mr. Robin likes to be near the supply of his favorite fruit. The wrens built under the eaves of the porch, and above the windows, in sheltered places. All the pigeons in the neighborhood flew here to strut and coo, and help eat any grain that might be thrown out.

What one saw now, waiting at the porch steps, was principally a family of cats. There were no less than nine posing expectantly before the queer looking character known to Milton folks as Seneca Sprague.

First of all, Sandyface, the speckled tabby-cat, sat placidly washing her face on the lower step. Close at her back, on the ground one was even playing with its mother's steadily waving tail was Sandyface's latest family, the four kittens bearing the remarkable names of Starboard, Port, Hard-a-lee and Mainsheet.

Grouped farther away from the mother cat were the four well-grown young cats, Spotty, Almira, Popocatepetl and Bungle.

Much farther in the background, and in the attitude of sleep, with his head on his forepaws, but with a blinking eye that lost nothing of what went on at the porch (for Mrs. MacCall might appear at any moment with his own particular dish) lay a big Newfoundland dog, with a noble head, intelligent brown eyes, and a muzzle now graying with age. This was the Corner House girls' newest and most valued pet, Tom Jonah.

In addition, on the clothes-drying green, was Billy Bumps. This suggestively named individual was a sturdy, wise-looking goat, with a face and chin-whisker which Mrs. MacCall declared was "as long as the moral law," and whose proclivity to eat anything that could be masticated was well-known to the Kenway children.

This collection of dumb pets the tall, lank, barefooted man in the broken straw hat and linen duster, now faced with a serious mien as though he were a real preacher and addressed a human congregation.

Seneca Sprague was a harmless person, considered "not quite right," as Tess had said, by his fellow-townsmen. Whether his oddities arose from a distraught mind, or an indulgence in a love of publicity, it would be hard to say.

His sharp-featured face and long, luxurious iron-gray hair, which he sometimes wore knotted up like a woman's, marked him wherever he went. Even those who thought him the possessor of a mind diseased agreed that he was quite harmless.

He came and went as he pleased, often preaching on street corners a doctrine which included a belief in George Washington as a supernatural being; and he was patriotic to the core.

Sometimes bad boys made fun of him, and followed and pelted him in the street; but, of course, the Corner House girls, who were kind to everybody and everything, would not have thought of harrying the queer old man, or ridiculing him.

Occasionally Seneca Sprague wrote and had printed a tract in which he ramblingly expressed his religious and patriotic beliefs, and an edition of this tract he was now selling from house to house in Milton. Ruth had, of course, purchased one and as Tess and Dot came into the old Corner House yard, Mr. Sprague was just turning away from the door, and had caught sight of the expectant congregation of pets gathered below him.

"Lo, and behold! lo, and behold!" ejaculated Seneca Sprague, in a solemn and resonant voice. "What saith the Scriptures? Him that hath ears to hear, let him hear."

Every cat's ears were pricked forward expectantly and even Tom Jonah lifted his glossy ears probably hearing Mrs. MacCall's step at the kitchen door. Billy Bumps lifted a ruminant head and blatted softly.

"Thus saith the prophet," went on Seneca Sprague, in his sing-song tone. "There is yet a little time in which man may repent. Then cometh the Crack o' Doom! Beware! beware! beware!"

Here Dot whispered to Tess: "How did Mr. Seneca Sprague come to know so much about prophets, and what's going to happen, and all that? And what is the Crack o' Doom?"

"Mercy, I don't know, child!" exclaimed Tess. "I'm sure I didn't crack it."

The queer old man was interrupted just here, too, by Ruth Kenway's reappearance upon the porch. Ruth was a very intelligent looking girl, if not exactly a pretty one. She was dark and her hair was black; she had warm, brown eyes and a sweet, steady smile that pleased most people.

"Oh, Mr. Sprague!" she said, attracting that queer individual's attention. He actually swept off his torn straw hat and bowed before her.

Ruth's voice was low and pleasant. Mrs. MacCall said she had an old head upon young shoulders. But there had been good reason for the oldest of the Corner House girls to show in her look and manner the effect of responsibility and burden of forethought beyond her years.

Before the fortune had come to them the little Kenways had had only a small pension to exist upon, and they had had to share that with Aunt Sarah Maltby. For nearly two years Ruth had taken her mother's place and looked after the family.

It had made her seem old beyond her real age; but it had likewise given her a confidence in herself which she otherwise would not have had. People deferred to Ruth Kenway; even Mr. Howbridge thought she was quite a wonderful girl.

"Oh, Mr. Sprague," she said again. "I meant to tell you that you are welcome to some of those fall pippins, down there by the hen-run if you care to pick them up. Just help yourself. I know you don't use meat, and that you live on fruit and vegetables; and apples are hard to get at the store."

"Thank you thank you," said the strange, old man, politely. "I will avail myself of the privilege you so kindly offer. It is true I live on the fruits of the earth wholly, for are we not commanded to shed no blood no, not at all? Yea, verily, he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword "

"And I hope you will like the pippins, Mr. Sprague," broke in Ruth, knowing how long-winded the old fellow was, and being cumbered by many cares herself just then.

"Ah! there you are, children," she added, addressing Tess and Dot. "Come right in and make ready for lunch. Don't let us keep Mrs. MacCall waiting. She and Linda are preserving to-day and they want to get the lunch over and out of the way."

The smaller girls hastened into the house, thus admonished, and up to the dressing room connected with the two, big, double bedrooms in the other wing, which the four sisters had occupied ever since coming to the old Corner House. Ruth went with them to superintend the washing of hands and face, smoothing of hair and freshening of frocks and ribbons. Ruth had to act as inspector after the youngest Kenway's ablutions, Tess declaring: "Dot doesn't always wash into all the corners."

"I do, too, Tess Kenway!" cried the smaller girl. "Ruthie has to watch us 'cause you button your apron crooked. You know you do!"

"I don't mean to," said Tess, "but I can't see behind me. I'd like to be as neat looking all the time as that lady in the gray cloak. Oh, Ruthie! who was she?"

"I have no idea whom you are talking about," said the elder sister, curiously. "'The lady in the gray cloak'? What lady in a gray cloak?"