Neale O'Neil knew very well that he could not satisfy everybody--least of
all the rattlesnake.
Mrs. Heard did not want her S.P.C.A. sensibilities hurt; Agnes wanted
him to drive on; Ruth wished him to dodge the coiled rattler. As for
getting out and "coaxing it to move on" with a stick, Neale had no such
intention.
He tried starting slowly to see if the serpent would be frightened and
open the way for the passage of the car. But the rattler instantly
coiled and sprang twice at the hood. The second time it sank its fangs
into the left front tire.
"Cricky!" gasped Neale. "They say you swell all up when one of those
things injects poison into you; but I don't believe that tire will swell
any more than it is."
"Don't make fun!" groaned Agnes. "Suppose it should jump into the car?"
"If we only had a gun," began Neale.
"Well, I hope you haven't, young man," cried Mrs. Heard. "I'm deadly
afraid of firearms."
"Don't get out of the car, Neale," begged Agnes, clasping her hands.
"Try to back away from it," suggested Ruth.
The smaller girls clung to each other (Dot determinedly to the
Alice-doll, as well), and, although they did not say much, they were
frightened. Tess whispered:
"Oh, dear me! I'm 'fraid enough of the wriggling fish-worms that Sammy
digs in our garden. And this snake is a hundred times as big!"
"And fish-worms don't shoot people with their tongues, do they?"
suggested Dot.
Just at that very moment, when the six-foot rattler had coiled to strike
again, there was a rattling and jangling of tinware from up the road.
There was a turn not far ahead, and the young folks could not see beyond
it.
"Goodness me!" exploded Agnes, "what's coming now?"
"Not another rattlesnake, I bet a cent--though it's some rattling,"
chuckled Neale O'Neil.
The heads of a pair of horses then appeared around the turn. They proved
to be drawing a tin-peddler's wagon, and over this rough piece of
driveway the wash-boilers, dishpans, kettles, pails, and a dozen other
articles of tin and agate-ware, were making more noise than the passage
of a battery of artillery.
Some scientists have pointed out that snakes--some snakes, at least--seem
to be hard of hearing. That could not have been so with the big
rattlesnake that had held up the Kenways and their automobile.
Before the Jewish peddler on the seat of the wagon could draw his
willing horses to a halt, the snake swiftly uncoiled and wriggled across
the road and into the bushes. All that was left to mark his recent
presence was a wavy mark in the dust.
"Vat's the madder?" called the peddler. "Ain't dere room to ged by?"
"Sure," said the relieved Neale. "Let me back a little and you pull out
to the right, and we'll be all right. We were held up by a snake."
The Jew (he was a little man with fiery hair and whiskers, and he had a
narrow-brimmed derby hat jammed down upon his head), seemed to study
over this answer of the boy for fully a minute. Then, as Neale was
steering the automobile slowly past his rig, he leaned sidewise and
asked, with a broad smile:
"I say, mister! Vat did you say stopped you?"
"A snake," declared Neale, grinning.
"Oy, oy! And that it iss yedt to drive one of them so benzine carts? No!
Mein horses iss petter. They are not afraid of snakes."
He still sat, without starting his team, thinking the surprising matter
over, when the automobile turned the curve in the road and struck better
going.
"Well!" ejaculated Agnes, "I only hope he stays there till that snake
comes out of the bushes again and climbs into his cart."
"My! how disagreeable you can be," returned Neale, laughing. "I don't
believe you'll get your wish, however."
"I'm glad we didn't run over that snake," declared Mrs. Heard, nodding
her head. "I'm opposed to killing any dumb creature."
"Then," suggested Dot, earnestly, "you must be like Mr. Seneca Sprague."
"Me? Like Seneca Sprague?" gasped the lady, yet rather amused. "I like
that!"
"Why, how can that be, Dot?" asked Ruth, rather puzzled herself, for
Seneca Sprague was a queer character who was thought by most Milton
people to be a little crazy.
"Why, he's a vegetablearian. And Mrs. Heard must be," announced Dot,
confidently, "if she doesn't believe in killing dumb beasts."
"There's logic for you!" exclaimed Neale. "Score one for Dot."
The lady laughed heartily. "I suppose I ought to be a 'vegetablearian'
if I'm not," she said. "I dunno as I could worship beasts the way some
of the ancients did; but I don't believe in killing them unnecessarily."
"_I_ know about some of the animal gods and goddesses the Greeks and
Egyptians used to worship," ventured Tess, who had not taken much part
in the conversation of late. "Did any of them worship snakes, do you
s'pose?"
"I believe some peoples did," Ruth told her.
"Oh, _I_ know about gods and goddesses," cried Dot, eagerly. "Our
teacher read about them--or, _some_ of them--only yesterday, in school."
"Well, Miss Know-it-all," said Agnes, good-naturedly, "what did you
learn about them?"
"I--I remember 'bout one named Ceres," said the smallest Corner House
girl, with corrugated brow, trying to remember what she had heard read.
"Well, what about her?" asked Agnes, encouragingly.
"What was Ceres the goddess of, honey?" pursued Ruth, as Dot still
hesitated.
"Why--why she was the goddess of dressmaking," declared the child, with
sudden conviction.
"Oh, oh, oh!" ejaculated Neale, under his breath.
"For goodness sake! where did you get _that_ idea?" demanded Ruth, while
Agnes and Mrs. Heard positively could not keep from laughing, and Tess
looked at her smaller sister with something like horror. "Why--Dot
Kenway!" she murmured.
"She is, too!" pouted Dot. "My teacher said so. She said Ceres was the
goddess of 'ripping and sewing.' Now, isn't that dressmaking?"
"Oh, cricky!" gasped Neale, and swerved the car to the left in his
emotion.
"Do be careful, Neale!" squealed Agnes.
"Yes. You'll have us into something," warned Ruth.
"Then put ear-muffs on me," groaned the boy. "That child will be the
death of me yet. 'Sowing and reaping'--'ripping and sewing'--wow!"
"Humph!" observed Agnes. "You needn't be the death of _us_ if she does
say something funny. _Do_ keep your mind on what you are about, Neale."
But Neale O'Neil was a careful driver. He was a sober boy, anyway, and
would never qualify in the joy-riding class, that was sure.
The remainder of the ride to Marchenell Grove was a jolly and enjoyable
one. They all liked Mrs. Heard more and more as they became better
acquainted with her. She seemed to know just how to get along with young
folk, and despite her stated suffragist and S.P.C.A. proclivities, even
Neale pronounced her "good fun."
The Grove was a very popular resort, and very large. Perhaps it was just
as well that Mrs. Heard was with the girls, for unexpectedly a situation
developed during the day that might have been really unpleasant had not
an older person--like the good and talkative lady--been with them.
There was a large party of picnickers that had come together and that
made one end of the grounds very lively. There was an orchestra with
them and they usurped the dancing pavilion. Not that Ruth or Agnes would
have danced here; neither Mr. Howbridge nor Mrs. MacCall would have
approved; nor did Mrs. Heard countenance dancing in such a public place.
But after they had all been out in boats on the river, and had eaten
their lunch, and enjoyed the swings, and strolled through the pleasant
paths of the Grove, it was only natural that the two older Kenways
should wish to see the dancing. They had no idea that the crowd about
the pavilion was rowdyish.
Neale was busy with the car in preparation for their return to Milton.
The little girls were watching him at work, and Mrs. Heard was resting
in the car, too. So Ruth and Agnes went alone down to the pavilion.
"Dear me," sighed Agnes. "I really wish we _could_ have just one spin on
the floor--just us two. That music makes my feet fairly _itch_."
"You will have to possess your soul with patience--or else scratch your
poor little feet," laughed her sister. "To think of your wanting to
dance _here_! I am afraid all these people--especially the boys--are not
nice."
"I don't care. I don't want to dance with _them_," pouted Agnes. "Only
with you. I just love to dance to this piece the orchestra is playing."
"Save it till next week's school dance," laughed Ruth. "Oh!"
Her startled ejaculation was brought out by the appearance of a strange
young man at her elbow. He was really not a nice looking fellow at all,
his face was unpleasantly freckled, and the corners of his lips and the
ends of the first three fingers of his right hand were stained deeply by
the use of cigarettes.
"Aft'noon!" said this stranger, affably. "Want a whirl? The floor's
fine--come on in."
Agnes, who was much more timid in reality than she usually appeared,
shrank from the fellow, trying to draw Ruth with her.
"Let the kid wait for us," suggested the freckled young man, leering
good-naturedly enough at Agnes, and probably not at all aware that he
was distasteful to the Kenway girls. "We can have one whirl."
"I am much obliged to you," Ruth said, rather falteringly. "I would
rather not."
"Aw, say--just a turn. Don't throw me down," said the fellow, his eyes
becoming suddenly hard and the smile beginning to disappear from his
face.
"No, thank you. Neither my sister nor I wish to dance here," said Ruth,
growing bolder--and more indignant.
"Don't tell me you don't know how to dance?" growled the freckled one.
"I don't tell you anything, but that we do not wish to dance," and Ruth
tried to turn away from him.
The fellow stepped directly in their path. They were just on the fringe
of loiterers about the pavilion. Agnes clapped a hand upon her lips to
keep from screaming.
"Aw, come on," said the fellow, laying a detaining hand upon Ruth's arm.
Then something very unexpected, but very welcome, happened. Mrs. Heard,
seeing a hand's breadth of cloud in the sky and fearing a thunder storm,
had sent Neale O'Neil scurrying for the girls. He came to the spot
before this affair could go any farther.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed, sharply. "What's this?"
"This--this gentleman," said Ruth, faintly, "offers to dance with me, but
I tell him 'no.'"
"What are _you_ butting in for, kid?" demanded the freckled young
fellow, thrusting his jaw forward in an ugly manner. But he took his
hand from Ruth's arm.
Neale said to the girls, quite quietly though his eyes flashed:
"Mrs. Heard wants you to come back to the car at once. Please hurry."
"Say! I don't get you," began the rough again.
"You will in a moment," Neale shot at him. "Go away, girls!"
Agnes did not want to go now; but Ruth saw it would be better and she
fairly dragged her sister away.
"Neale will be hurt!" moaned Agnes, all the way to the car. "That awful
rowdy has friends, of course."
What really happened to Neale the girls never knew, for he would not
talk about it. Trained from his very babyhood as an acrobat, the
ex-circus boy would be able to give a good account of himself if it came
to fisticuffs with the freckled-faced fellow. Although the latter was
considerably older and taller than Neale, the way he had lived had not
hardened his muscles and made him quick of eye and foot or handy with
his fists.
Perhaps Neale did not fight at all. At least he came back to the car
without a mark upon him and without even having had his clothes ruffled.
All he said in answer to the excited questions of the girls was:
"That's a fellow called Saleratus Joe. You can tell why--his face with
all those yellow freckles looks like an old fashioned saleratus biscuit.
He belongs in Milton. I've seen him before. He isn't much better than a
saloon lounger."
"Goodness me!" exclaimed Mrs. Heard. "Saleratus Joe is one of the
fellows who my nephew thinks stole his automobile. I must tell him that
we saw the fellow. Perhaps the car can be traced after all."
"Through Saleratus Joe?" said Neale O'Neil. "Well--maybe."