"Can't you back, Neale?" asked Ruth Kenway, doubtfully. "We really don't
want to stay here all day."
"Or wait upon the pleasure of a ridiculous beast like that," snapped
Agnes, more than a little exasperated herself.
The woman looked around again. She had a pleasant face, and Tess smiled
at her. Tess knew that the lady must feel a good deal worse than _they_
did about it.
"You don't know how ridiculous he is," said the woman, hopelessly. "He
may start any minute; then again he may stay here until he gets hungry.
And he's only just eaten his breakfast."
"He looks as if he'd live as long without eating as a camel can go
without drinking," chuckled Neale O'Neil.
"It's no laughing matter," protested Agnes. "We want to get somewhere."
"You can't want to get somewhere worse than _I_ do, my dear," said the
woman, with a sigh. "And only think! I have sat behind this pony _hours
and hours_ during the past ten years."
"Can't--can't he be cured?" asked Tess, doubtfully.
"He's a real pretty pony, _I_ think," said Dot.
"'Handsome is as handsome does,' Mrs. Mac would say," Ruth declared. "Is
there no way of turning, Neale?" she repeated.
"I don't see how. We don't want to scratch the car all up in those
bushes and on those stumps. And if we back to where the road is wider
we'll have to back for half a mile."
"A trolley car is lots better than an auto, then," declared Dot, with
conviction.
"Why, Dottie! how can you say that?" cried Tess, in utter disapproval.
"'Cause if it gets stuck the motorman can go to the back end and run it
just as well as at the front end," said the smallest Corner House girl,
promptly.
"Some kid that!" murmured Neale, while the others laughed. "Have you
tried the whip, ma'am?" he asked of the woman in the basket phaeton.
"I've broken it on him," confessed the woman, shaking her head. "He
doesn't even feel it. The flies bother him more than a whip. He is just
the most tantalizing brute of a horse that ever was. Jonas! Get up!"
Jonas stood still. He merely flicked flies and wagged his ears. He was
really the most peaceful animate object visible in the whole landscape.
The Corner House girls, since coming to Milton to live in the old
dwelling that Uncle Peter Stower had left them at his death, had enjoyed
many adventures, but few more ridiculous than this. Here they sat in
their new, high-powered car, ready and anxious to spin over the country
roads to their goal--a famous picnicking grounds fifty miles from
Milton--and a little old fat brown pony, with a stubborn disposition and
a cropped mane, held them up as certainly as though he had been a
highway robber!
The four young Kenways--Ruth, Agnes, Tess and Dot--with Aunt Sarah Maltby
(who really was only an "adopted" aunt) had been very poor indeed before
Uncle Peter Stower had died and left the girls the bulk of his estate
and a small legacy to Aunt Sarah.
Mr. Howbridge, the administrator of the estate and the girls' guardian,
had come to the Kenways' poor tenement in the city where they lived, and
had taken them to the old Corner House--quite an old mansion overlooking
the Parade Ground in Milton, and supposed by some of the neighbors to be
"haunted."
How the girls laid the "garret ghost" and how they proved their right
and title to Uncle Peter's estate against the claims of a certain Mrs.
Treble (known as "Mrs. Trouble" to the rather pert Agnes) and her little
girl, "Double-Trouble," is told in the first volume of this series,
entitled "The Corner House Girls."
Afterward the little "Adamless Eden" on the corner of Willow and Main
Streets is trespassed upon by a boy who has run away from a circus to
get an education--Neale O'Neil. He proves to be a thoroughly likable boy,
and even Ruth and Tess, who do not much approve of the opposite sex, are
prone to like Neale.
In "The Corner House Girls at School" Neale becomes a fixture in the
neighborhood, living with Mr. Con Murphy, the little old cobbler on the
street back of the Stower place, and doing chores for the Corner House
girls and other neighbors to help support himself while he attends
school.
The girls extend their acquaintance widely during this first school year
at Milton, and when summer comes they visit Pleasant Cove, where they
befriend Rosa and June Wildwood, two Southern girls, and meanwhile have
adventures galore along the shore. Indeed, "The Corner House Girls Under
Canvas" introduces many new friends to both the girls themselves and to
the reader, notable among whom is Tom Jonah, who, although only a dog,
is a thorough gentleman.
The girls' friendliness to all living creatures gathers about them, as
is natural, a galaxy of pets, including a rapidly growing menagerie of
cats, the dog in question, a goat, and (this is Agnes' inclusion) Sammy
Pinkney, the little boy who is determined to be a pirate when he grows
up.
The fall following this summer vacation just mentioned, sees all the
Corner House girls taking part in a play produced by the combined effort
of the town schools. Their failures and successes in producing _The
Carnation Countess_ is interwoven with a mystery surrounding the
punishment of Agnes and some of her fellow-classmates for an infraction
of the rules--a punishment that promises at one time to spoil the play
entirely. "The Corner House Girls in a Play" is interesting and it turns
out happily in the end. One of the best things about it is the fact that
three thousand dollars is raised by means of the play for the Women's
and Children's Hospital, and Mrs. Eland, the matron, is able to retain
her position in that institution.
Mrs. Eland and her sister, Miss Pepperill, who has been Tess Kenway's
school teacher, become very good friends of the Corner House girls. In
the volume of the series immediately preceding this present narrative,
entitled "The Corner House Girls' Odd Find" the Kenways find an old,
apparently worthless, album in the garret of the mansion--a treasure room
which seems inexhaustible in its supply of mystery and amusing
incidents.
This album seems to contain a lot of counterfeit money and bonds, which
in the end prove to have been hidden in the Stower house by a miserly
uncle of Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill, Mr. Lemuel Aden, who had died
too suddenly to make a will or to tell of his hidden treasure--and the
money and bonds are really perfectly good.
The four Kenway sisters, therefore, saw their friends, the hospital
matron and the school teacher, made comfortably wealthy for life; and
the beautiful, seven passenger touring car, with self-starter, "quick
top," and all the modern appurtenances of a good automobile, was the
gift of the legatees of Mr. Lemuel Aden.
"But it might as well be a flivver," said Agnes, in disgust, "if we've
got to sit here all day and watch a fat brown pony whisk his tail."
"I don't see what I can do, my dear," said the woman in the basket
phaeton. "You can't lead him, and you can't push him, and I verily
believe if you built a fire under him he'd just move up far enough to
burn the cart, and stand there until his harness scorched him."
Agnes giggled at that, and was her own jolly self again. "It's up to
you, Neale O'Neil," she declared. "You're the chauffeur and are supposed
to make us go. Make us!"
"Get out and walk around the pony," proposed Neale, grinning.
"And what about the car?"
"Do you think we could lift it over?" said Ruth, with scorn.
"Now, young man," Agnes pursued, with gravity. "It is your duty to get
us to Marchenell Grove. We're still twenty-five or thirty miles away
from it----"
"My goodness!" exclaimed the lady in front. "Were you young folks going
there?"
"We had an idea of doing so when we started, ma'am," said Agnes,
quickly.
"I should have gone there to-day, too----"
"Not with that pony?" shrieked Agnes, clasping her hands.
"Why--no," said the lady, smiling. "But if my nephew hadn't lost his
automobile he would have taken me. Oh, dear! Now I shall have to ride
behind Jonas all the time."
"You really don't call this riding, do you, ma'am?" asked the
irrepressible Agnes.
The woman laughed. She liked Agnes Kenway from the first, as almost
everybody who met her did.
"I'm not riding fast just now, and that's a fact," she said, nodding her
bonnet with its many bows. "Nor does Jonas take me over the roads very
rapidly at his very best pace."
Neale O'Neil had got slowly out of the car and now walked around to the
head of the fat brown pony. The pony had blue eyes, and they were very
mild. But he seemed to have no idea of going on and getting himself and
his mistress out of the way of the automobile. Maybe he did not like
automobiles.
"You see, my nephew bought a car and we let Jonas kick up his heels in
the paddock. Oh! he's lively enough when he wants to be--Jonas, I mean.
But my nephew's car was stolen day before yesterday--and he's worried
almost to death about it, poor man."
"Oh!" cried Ruth, "who _is_ your nephew, Madam?"
"Why, Philip Collinger is my nephew. He's the county surveyor, you know.
A very bright young man--if I do say it. But not bright enough to keep
from having his auto stolen," she added, ruefully.
Just then Agnes, who had been watching Neale O'Neil, called:
"What _are_ you doing to that pony, Neale?"
The boy had rubbed the fat brown pony's nose. He had lifted first one
foot and then the other, going all around the pony to do so. He had
patted his neck. Jonas had seemed rather to like these attentions. He
still whisked flies calmly.
Now Neale reached over and took one of the pony's ears in his hand,
holding it firmly. To the other ear the boy put his lips and seemed to
be whispering something privately to Jonas.
"What _are_ you doing to that pony, Neale?" cried Agnes again.
"Mercy! what is the boy doing? Why, Jonas doesn't pay any attention to
me when I fairly yell at him. He's deaf, I believe."
And then the lady stopped, startled. The four Corner House girls all
expressed their amazement with a united cry. Neale had taken the pony
firmly by the bridle and was leading him quietly out of the middle of
the road.
"For pity's sake!" gasped the pony's mistress, "I never saw the like of
that before."
Jonas seemed to have forgotten all about balking. He still wagged his
ears to keep the flies away and whisked his tail industriously.
Neale, leading the pony, turned a corner in the lane, and there came
upon a house. The lady had left the phaeton to speak to the girls more
companionably. Neale tied the pony to the picket fence before the house,
leaving the hitching strap long enough to allow the animal to graze.
"Well, I want to know!" cried the woman, when the boy returned to the
car. "How did you do that? What did you do to Jonas to make him change
his mind?"
"This is Mrs. Heard, Neale," said Ruth, smiling. "You sometimes _do_
prove to be a smart boy. What did you do to him?"
Neale grinned broadly. He had been used to horses all his life and he
knew a few tricks of the Gypsies and the horse-traders.
"I just told him something," the boy said.
"Oo-ee!" cried Tess. "Did you really whisper to him?"
Neale nodded.
"_What_ did you whisper to the pony?" asked Dot, wide-eyed.
Agnes snapped, thinking Neale was fooling her: "I don't believe it!"
"Yes, I whispered to him," said the boy, seriously.
"Oh, Neale!" remonstrated Ruth.
"Well! For all I ever heard!" exclaimed Mrs. Heard. "What did you
whisper to that vexatious brute of a pony?"
"If I told what it was, that would spoil the charm," said Neale,
gravely.
"Nonsense!" ejaculated Agnes, flushing.
"Now you know that is ridiculous," said Ruth, inclined to be exasperated
with the boy as much as she had been with the pony.
"No. It is a fact," said the boy, decidedly.
"Now, you know that isn't so, Neale O'Neil!" cried Agnes.
"I assure you it is. Anyway, they say if you tell it--what you say--to
anybody else, the horse will balk again right away. It's a secret
between him and the person----"
"I never heard such a ridiculous thing in all my life," gasped Mrs.
Heard.
"I think you are not very polite, Neale," said Ruth, quite sternly.
"Now see here!" cried the badgered boy, getting rather vexed himself. "I
tell you I can't tell you----"
"You're talking anything but English," complained Agnes.
"Well, maybe I didn't talk English into the pony's ear," retorted Neale,
grinning suddenly again. "Anyway, the old Gyp who taught me that trick
told me I must never say the words aloud, or to anybody who would not
make proper use of the magic formula."
"Oh, shucks!" exclaimed Agnes, in disgust. "Tell me. I'll try it on
Billy Bumps when _he_ balks," said Tess, in a small voice.
At that they all laughed and Neale got in behind the steering wheel
again. The two older girls were much interested in Mrs. Heard and that
woman was evidently pleased with the sisters.
"Why, yes; I ought to know you Corner House girls. Goodness knows I've
heard enough about you--and my name being Heard, I heard a lot!" and she
laughed. "But you see, I live away on this side of town, and don't go to
your church; so we have never met before."
"I am sure the loss has been ours," said Ruth, politely. "I hope your
pony will not balk again to-day."
"Goodness knows! He'll balk if he takes a notion to. I don't suppose
what you whispered to him is guaranteed to be a permanent cure, is it,
boy?" she asked Neale O'Neil.
"No, ma'am," grinned the boy.
"And you expected to go to Marchenell Grove to-day, Mrs. Heard?" Ruth
said, reflectively, looking at Agnes enquiringly although she spoke to
the mistress of the fat brown pony.
"I had thought to. Philly Collinger was going to take me. But if he
doesn't recover his car he'll not take me auto riding very soon again."
"Well," said Ruth, having received a nod of acquiescence from Agnes, "I
don't see why you shouldn't go there to-day just the same. Won't you
come with us? There's room in the car."
"Goody! Of course she can!" cried Agnes, clapping her hands.
"I think that would be real nice," agreed Tess.
Dot moved over at once to make room. "She can sit beside me and the
Alice-doll," she proclaimed.
"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Mrs. Heard, her face alight with pleasure
at this united invitation. "You are just the nicest girls I ever met. I
wonder if I'd better?"
"Of course," said Ruth. "You can find some place to leave the pony. Or
Neale can, I'm sure."
"Why, I know these people right in the very next house," said Mrs.
Heard. "Indeed I expected to call there if Jonas ever got that far."
Neale got briskly out of the car again. "I'll go and unharness him," he
said, cheerfully. "You just find out where I shall put him. He'd rather
have you ride in an automobile than drag you himself," and he laughed.
"Did--did he _tell_ you so, Neale, when you were talking with him?" asked
Dot, in amazement.
Then they all laughed.