EVERYTHING AT SIXES AND SEVENS
Things sometimes begin to go wrong the very moment one wakes up in the
morning.
Then there is the coming down to breakfast with a teeny, weeny twist in
one's temper that makes some unfeeling person say:
"I guess you got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning."
Now, of course, that is silly. There can be no wrong side to a bed--that
is, to get out of. Getting up has nothing to do with it. Things are just
wrong and that is all there is to it.
Fortunately this state of mind seldom lasted all day with any of the
four Corner House girls; nor did they often begin the day in such a
humor.
But there are exceptions to every rule, they say. And this Wednesday
most certainly was the day when matters were "at sixes and sevens" for
Dorothy Kenway.
It would not be at all surprising if the trouble started the evening
before when she learned that she had inadvertently named her new baby No
Smoking. That certainly was cause for despair as well as making one feel
horribly ridiculous.
Of course, Ruth in her kind way, had tried to make the smallest Corner
House girl forget it; but Dot remembered it very clearly when morning
came and she got up.
Then, she could not find the slippers she had worn the day before; and
if Mrs. MacCall saw her with her best ones on, there would be something
said about it--Dot knew that.
Then, Tess seemed suddenly very distant to her. She had something on her
mind and carried herself with her very "grown-upest" air with Dot. The
latter, on this morning particularly, hated to admit that Tess was more
than a very few days older than herself.
Tess went off on this business that made her so haughty, all by herself,
right after breakfast. When Dot called after her:
"Where are you going, Tess?" the latter had said very frankly, "Where
_you_ can't go," and then went right on without stopping for a moment to
argue the point.
"I do think that is too mean for anything!" declared Dot to herself,
quite too angry to cry. She sat sullenly on the porch steps, and
although she heard Sandyface purring very loudly and suggestively, just
inside the woodshed door, she would not get up to go to see the old
cat's babies--of which Sandyface was inordinately proud.
"Wait," ruminated Dot, shaking her head. "Wait till Tess Kenway wants me
to go somewhere with her. _I won't go!_ There, now!"
So she sat, feeling very lonesome and miserable, and "enjoying" it
immensely. She need not have been lonely. She could hear the older girls
and Luke laughing in the front of the house, and she would have been
welcomed had she gone there. Ruth was always a comforter, and even Agnes
seldom said the smallest girl nay.
But Dot had managed to raise a laugh a little while before--she being
the person laughed at. She chanced to hear Luke, who was running lightly
over the old and yellowed keys of the piano, say:
"No wonder these instruments cost so much. You know it takes several
elephants alone to make these," and he struck another chord.
Dot had heard about the intelligence of elephants and like most other
little people believed that the great pachyderms could do almost
anything. But this was too much for even Dot Kenway's belief.
"Oh, Ruth! elephants can't work at that trade, can they?" she demanded.
"What trade, honey?" asked the surprised older sister.
"Piano making. I should think that carpenters built pianos--not
elephants."
Of course, the older ones had laughed, and Dot's spirits had fallen
another degree, although Ruth was careful to explain to the little girl
that Luke had meant it took the tusks of several elephants to fashion
the ivory keys for one piano.
However, Dot was in no mood for "tagging" after the older ones. She
just wanted to sit still and suffer! She heard Mabel Creamer
"hoo-hooing" for her from beyond the yard fence, but she would not
answer. Had it not been for the Alice-doll (which of course she hugged
tight to her troubled little breast) life would have scarcely seemed
worth living to the smallest Corner House girl.
And just then she looked up and saw a picture across the street even
more woe-begone than the one she herself made. It was Sammy Pinkney,
gloom corrugating his brow, an angry flush in his cheeks, and sullenly
kicking the toe first of one shoe and then the other against the pickets
of the fence where he stood.
It was evident that Sammy had been forbidden freedom other than that of
his own premises. He stared across at the smallest Corner House girl;
but he was too miserable even to hail Dot.
After all, it seemed to the latter, that Sammy was being inordinately
punished for having given Sandyface and her family an aerial ride.
Besides, misery loves company. Dot was in no mood to mingle with the
joyous and free. But Sammy's state appealed to her deeply.
She finally got up off the step and strolled out of the yard and across
the street.
"'Lo, Sammy," she said, as the boy continued to stare in another
direction though knowing very well that she was present before him.
"'Lo, Dot," he grumbled.
"What's the matter, Sammy?" she asked.
"Ain't nothin' the matter," he denied, kicking on the pickets again.
"Dear me," sighed Dot, "_I_ just think _every_thing's too mean for
_any_thing!"
"Huh!"
"And everybody at my house is mean to me, too," added the little girl,
stirring up her own bile by the audible reiteration of her thoughts.
"Yes, they are!"
"Huh!" repeated the scornful Sammy. "They ain't nowhere near as mean to
you as my folks are to me."
"You don't know--"
"Did they lick you?" demanded the boy fiercely.
"No-o."
"And then make you stay in your room and have your supper there?"
"No-o."
"Ma brought it up on a tray," the boy said fiercely, "so I couldn't get
no second helping of apple dumpling."
"Oh, Sammy!" Somehow, after all, his misery seemed greater than her own.
Yet there was a sore spot in the little girl's heart. "I--I wish I could
run away," she blurted out, never having thought of such a thing until
that very moment. "_Then_ they'd see."
"Hist!" breathed Sammy, coming closer and putting his lips as close to
the little girl's ear as the pickets would allow. "Hist! _I am going to
run away!_"
Dot took this statement much more calmly than he expected.
"Oh, yes," she said. "When you go to be a pirate. You've told me that
before, Sammy Pinkney." In fact, she had been hearing this threat ever
since she had come to the old Corner House and become acquainted with
this youngster.
"And I _am_ going to be a pirate," growled Sammy, with just as deep a
voice as he could muster.
"Oh! not _now_?" gasped Dot, suddenly realizing that this occasion was
fraught with more seriousness than any previous one of like character.
"You aren't going right off now to be a pirate, Sammy Pinkney?"
"Yes, I am," declared the boy.
"Not now? Not this morning? Not before your mother comes back from
marketing?" for she had seen Mrs. Pinkney's departure a few minutes
before.
"Yes, I am," and Sammy clinched it with a vigorous nod, although he had
not meant to run away until nightfall. People usually waited for night
to run away so it seemed to Sammy, but he was not going to have his
intention doubted.
"Oh, Sammy!" gasped Dot, clasping her hands across the Alice-doll's
stomach, "are--are there _girl_ pirates?"
"Are there what?" questioned Sammy in doubt.
"Can girls run away and be pirates, too?"
"Why--er--they wouldn't dars't."
"Yes, I would."
"You! Dot Kenway?"
"Yes I would," repeated Dot stubbornly.
"You want to be a pirate?" repeated Sammy. Of course he would rather
have a boy to run away with. But then--
"Why can't girls be pirates?" demanded the logical Dot. "Don't pirates
have to have somebody to cook and wash and keep house for them?"
"I--I don't know," admitted Sammy honestly. "I never read about any girl
pirates. But," as he saw Dot's pretty face beginning to cloud over, "I
don't know why there shouldn't be, if they wasn't too 'fraid."
"I won't be afraid," Dot declared, steeling herself as she had once done
when she was forced to go to the dentist's office.
"We-ell," began Sammy still doubtfully. But Dot was nothing if not
determined when once she made up her mind.
"Now, you come right along, Sammy Pinkney, if we're going to run away
and be pirates. You know your mother won't let you if she comes home and
catches you here."
"But--but we ought to take something to eat--and some clothes--and--and
a pistol and a knife--"
"Oo-ee!" squealed the little girl. "You won't take any horrid pistol and
knife if you're going to run off to be pirates with _me_, Sammy Pinkney.
Why, I'd be afraid to go with you."
"Huh!" grumbled Sammy, "you don't haf to go."
"But you said I could," Dot declared, sure of her position. "And now you
can't back out--you know you can't, Sammy. That wouldn't be fair."
"Aw, well. We gotter have money," he objected faintly.
"I'll run and get my purse," the little girl said cheerfully. "I've got
more than fifty cents in it."
But now unwonted chivalry began to stir faintly in Sammy's breast. If
they were going away together, it should be his "treat." He marched into
the house, smashed his bank with the kitchen poker, and came out with a
pocket full of silver and nickels that looked as if they amounted to
much more than they really did.
However, the sinews of war in his pocket was not without a certain
inspiration and comfort. Money would go a long way toward getting them
to a place where their respective families could neither nag nor punish
them.
As runaways they may have been different from most. But, then, Sammy
and Dot were very modern runaways indeed. People who saw them merely
observed two very well dressed children, walking hand in hand toward the
suburbs of Milton; the little girl hugging a doll to her breast and the
boy with a tight fist in one pocket holding down a couple of dollars
worth of change.
Who would have dreamed that they were enamored of being pirates and
expected to follow a career of rapine and bloodthirsty adventure on the
Spanish Main?