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 _cat_astrophe, 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.