ADVENTURES WITH SCALAWAG
Dot came home to the old Corner House the first day of the school term
with what Neale O'Neil would have called "serious trouble in the
internal department." She was ravenously hungry; and yet she had eaten a
good lunch and did not like to demand of Mrs. MacCall that bite between
meals which was so abhorred by the Scotchwoman.
"You have no more right to eat 'twixt one meal and t'other by day than
you have to demand a loonch in the middle of the night," was often the
good woman's observation when she was asked for a mid-afternoon lunch.
Ruth was easier. She had not been brought up in the rigid, repressive
school that had surrounded Mrs. MacCall's childhood. As for Linda, the
Finnish girl, if she had her way she would be "stuffing" (to quote Mrs.
MacCall) the children all the time.
"You sh'd train your stomach to be your clock, child," Mrs. MacCall
declared on this occasion, after Dot had finally mustered up her courage
to ask for the lunch.
"I try to, Mrs. Mac," said the smallest Corner House girl
apologetically. "But sometimes my stomach's fast."
That started the ball rolling that evening, and the dinner table proved
to be a hilarious place. But Ruth was very quiet and her countenance
carried a serious cast that might have been noticed had the others not
all been so gay and excited. The first day of the term is always an
exciting time. Everything about the school--even old things--seems
strange.
Dot had of course learned to write as well as to read; and indeed she
wrote a very plain and readable hand. Even Mrs. MacCall could see it
"without her specs."
"I do abominate these folks whose handwriting is so fine that I have to
run to get my glasses to know whether it's an invitation to tea or to
tell me some bad news," the housekeeper declared, in discussing Dot's
improved writing.
The little girl was passing around a paper on which she had copied a
sentence that her teacher had written on the blackboard just before
closing hour that day. With an idea of testing the children's knowledge
of English, the teacher had written the line and told her class to think
it over and, in the morning, bring her the sentence rewritten in
different words, but retaining the original meaning.
It was the old proverb: "A wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse."
"Of course, I know what it _means_," Dot said. "If a horse is blind he
wouldn't see you nodding or winking. And winking isn't polite,
anyway--Ruth says it isn't."
"Correct, Dottums," Agnes agreed. "It is very bad and bold to
wink--especially at the boys."
"Wouldn't it be impolite to wink at a horse, too, Aggie?" asked the
puzzled Dot. "Don't you think Scalawag would feel he was insulted if I
wunk at him?"
"Oh, my eye!" gasped Neale, who chanced to be at hand. "Wink, wank,
wunk. Great declension, kid."
"Don't call me 'kid'!" cried Dot. "I am sure _that_ is not polite, Neale
O 'Neil."
"Discovered, Neale!" chuckled Agnes.
"You are right, Dottie," said the boy, with a twinkle in his eye. "And
to repay you for my slip in manners, I will aid you in transposing that
sentence so that your teacher will scarcely recognize it."
And he did so. It greatly delighted Dot, for she did so love
polysyllables. The other members of the family were convulsed when they
read Neale's effort. The little girl carried the paper to school the
next day and the amazed teacher read the following paraphrase of "A wink
is as good as a nod to a blind horse:"
"A spasmodic movement of the eye is as adequate as a slight motion of
the cranium to an equine quadruped devoid of its visionary capacities."
"Goodness!" Tess declared when she had heard this read over several
times. "I don't think you would better read that to Scalawag, Dot. It
would make any horse mad."
"Scalawag isn't a horse," responded her sister. "He's a pony. And Neale
says he'll never grow up to be a horse. He's just always going to be our
cute, cunning little Scalawag!"
"But suppose," sighed Tess, thoughtfully, "that he ever acts like that
brown pony of Mrs. Heard's. Jonas, you know."
"Oh, Jonas! He is a _bad_ pony. He gets stuck and won't go," Dot said.
"Our Scalawag wouldn't do that."
"He balks, Dot--balks," reproved Tess. "He doesn't get stuck."
"I don't care. You can't push him, and you can't pull him. He just
stands."
"Until our Neale whispers something in his ear," suggested Tess.
"Oh, my!" exclaimed her little sister. "Suppose Scalawag _should_ be
taken that way. What _would_ we do? We don't know what Neale whispered
to Mrs. Heard's pony."
"That's so," agreed Tess. "And Neale won't tell me. I've asked him, and
_asked_ him! He was never so mean about anything before."
But Neale, with a reassuring smile, told the little girls that Scalawag
would never need to be whispered to. In fact, whispering to the calico
pony would merely be a waste of time.
"There's nothing the matter with the old villain but inborn laziness,"
the youth chuckled. "You have to shout to Scalawag, not whisper to him."
"Oh!" murmured Tess, "don't call him a villain. He is so pretty."
"And cute," added Dot.
Uncle Rufus had built him a nice box stall and Neale took time early
each morning to brush and curry the pony until his coat shone and his
mane was "crinkly."
Before the week was out, too, the basket phaeton arrived and a very
pretty russet, nickel-trimmed harness. Even the circus trimmings had
never fitted Scalawag better than this new harness, and he tossed his
head and pawed, as he had been trained to do, arching his neck and
looking just as though he were anxious to work.
"But it's all in his looks," observed Neale. "He doesn't mean it."
Which seemed to be the truth when the two little girls and Sammy Pinkney
got into the phaeton with Neale and took their first drive about the
more quiet residential streets of Milton.
Scalawag jogged along under compulsion; but to tell the truth he acted
just as though, if he had his own choice, he would never get out of a
walk.
"Je-ru-sa-_lem_!" muttered Sammy. "It's lucky we don't want to go
anywhere in a hurry."
It was great fun to drive around the Parade Ground and see the other
children stare. When Sammy was allowed to hold the lines he sat up like
a real coachman and was actually too proud for speech.
The responsibilities of his position immediately impressed the embryo
pirate. Neale taught him carefully how to drive, and what to do in any
emergency that might arise. Scalawag was an easy-bitted pony and minded
the rein perfectly. The only danger was the pony's slowness in getting
into action.
"I reckon," declared Neale, with some disgust, "if there was a bomb
dropped behind him, old Scalawag wouldn't get out of the way quick
enough, even if there was a five-minute time fuse on the bomb."
"Well, I guess he'll never run away then," said Tess, with a sigh of
satisfaction. Nothing could be said about Scalawag that one or the other
of the two little girls could not find an excuse for, or even that the
criticism was actually praise.
"One thing you want to remember, children," Neale said one day,
earnestly. "If you're ever out with Scalawag without me, and you hear a
band playing, or anything that sounds like a band, you turn him around
and beat it the other way."
"All right," responded the little girls.
"What for?" asked Sammy, at once interested.
"Never mind what for. You promise to do as I say, or it's all off.
You'll get no chance to drive the girls alone."
"Sure, I'll do what you say, Neale. Only I wondered what for. Don't he
like band music?"
But Neale, considering it safer to say nothing more, merely repeated his
warning.
The children drove out every pleasant afternoon when school was over,
and within the fortnight Sammy and Tess and Dot were going about Milton
with the pony through the shady and quiet streets, as though they had
always done so. Therefore the older Corner House girls and Neale could
take their friends to drive in the motor-car, without crowding in the
two smaller children.
The "newness" of the automobile having worn off for Tess and Dot, they
much preferred the basket carriage and the fat pony. They, too, could
take their little friends driving, and this added a feeling of
importance to their pleasure in the pony.
Had Tess had her way every sick or crippled child in town would have
ridden behind the calico pony. She wanted at once to go to the Women's
and Children's Hospital, where their very dear friend, Mrs. Eland, had
been matron and for the benefit of which _The Carnation Countess_ had
been given by the school children of Milton, and take every unfortunate
child, one after another, out in the basket carriage.
Their schoolmates especially had to be invited to ride, and Sadie
Goronofsky from Meadow Street, and Alfredia Blossom, Uncle Rufus'
granddaughter, were not neglected.
"I do declare!" said Aunt Sarah, with some exasperation, as she saw the
pony and cart, with its nondescript crew, start off one afternoon for a
jog around the Parade Ground. "I do declare! What riffraff Tess manages
to pick up. For she certainly must be the biggest influence in gathering
every rag, tag and bobtail child in the neighborhood. I never did see
such a youngster."
"It isn't that Tessie's tastes are so heterodox," Ruth said, smiling
quietly, "but her love for others is so broad."
"Humph!" snapped Aunt Sarah. "It's a wonder to me the child hasn't
brought smallpox into the family from going as she does to those awful
tenements on Meadow Street."
Aunt Sarah had always been snobbish in her tendencies, even in her days
of poverty; and since she enjoyed the comforts and luxuries of the old
Corner House it must be confessed that this unpleasant trait in the old
woman's character had been considerably developed.
"The only tenements she goes to on Meadow Street are our own," Ruth
replied with vigor. "If they are conducted so badly that diseases become
epidemic there, _we_ shall be to blame--shall we not?"
"Oh, don't talk socialism or political economy to _me_!" said Aunt
Sarah. "Thank goodness when _I_ went to school young girls did not fill
their heads with such nonsense."
"But when she went to school," Ruth said afterward to Mrs. MacCall,
"girls I am sure learned to be charitable and loving. And that is all
our Tess is, after all."
"Bless her sweet heart!" exclaimed the housekeeper. "She'll never be
hurt by that, it's true. But she does bring awfully queer looking
characters to the hoose, Ruth. There's no gainsaying that."
As the children met these other children at the public school, Ruth
could not see why the Goronofskys and the Maronis and the Tahnjeans, and
even Petunia Blossom's pickaninnies, should not, if they were well
behaved, come occasionally to the old Corner House. Nor did she forbid
her little sisters taking their schoolmates to ride in the basket
phaeton, for the calico pony could easily draw all that could pile into
the vehicle.
The children from Meadow Street, and from the other poorer quarters of
the town, always appeared at the Kenway domicile dressed in their best,
and scrubbed till their faces shone. The parents considered it an honor
for their children to be invited over by Tess and Dot.
Sammy, of course, would have found it much more agreeable to drive alone
with some of the boys than with a lot of the little girls; but he was
very fair about it.
"I can't take you 'nless Tess says so," he said to Iky Goronofsky. "I'm
only let to drive this pony; I don't own him. Tess and Dot have the say
of it."
"And all the kids is sponging on them," grunted Iky, who always had an
eye to the main chance. "You know what I would do if the pony was mine?"
"What would you do, Iky?" asked Sammy.
"I'd nefer let a kid in the cart without I was paid a nickel. Sure! A
nickel a ride! And I would soon make the cost of the harness and the
cart. That's what my father would do too."
Both of which statements were probably true. But the little Corner House
girls had no thought for business. They were bent upon having a good
time and giving their friends pleasure.
The pony was not being abused in any sense. The work was good for him.
But possibly Uncle Bill Sorber had not looked forward to quite such a
busy time for Scalawag when he told him in confidence that he was going
to have an easy time of it at the old Corner House. If Scalawag could
have seen, and been able to speak with, the old ringmaster just then the
pony would doubtless have pointed out an important error in the above
statement.
Scalawag was petted and fed and well cared for. But as the fall weather
was so pleasant, each afternoon he was put between the shafts and was
made to haul noisy, delighted little folk about the Parade Ground.
They did not always have company in these drives, however. Sometimes
only Tess and Dot were in the basket carriage, though usually Sammy was
along. Once in a while they went on errands for Mrs. MacCall--to the
store, or to carry things to sick people. The clatter of Scalawag's
little hoofs became well known upon many of the highways and byways of
Milton.
Once they drove to the Women's and Children's Hospital with a basket of
home-made jellies and jams that Mrs. MacCall had just put up and which
Ruth wished to donate to the convalescents in the institution. For after
the departure of Mrs. Eland and her sister, Miss Peperill, for the West,
the Corner House Girls had not lost their interest in this charitable
institution.
At a corner which they were approaching at Scalawag's usual jog trot
were several carriages, a hearse with plumes, and some men in uniform.
Sammy had the reins on this day.
"Oh, Sammy," said Tess, "we'll have to wait, I guess. It's Mr. Mudge's
funeral--Mr. Peter Mudge, you know. He was a Grand Army man, and all the
other Grand Army men will help bury him. There! Hear the band!"
Of a sudden, and with a moaning of wind instruments punctuated by the
roll of drums, the band struck into a dirge. The procession moved. And
all of a sudden Sammy found that Scalawag was marking time just as he
had been taught to do in the circus ring to any music.
"Oh, my!" gasped Dot, "what is the matter with Scalawag?"
"Turn him around, Sammy--please do," begged Tess. "Just see him! And
he's following the band."
That is just exactly what the pony intended to do. Sammy could not turn
him. He would mind neither voice nor the tugging rein. Arching his neck,
tossing his mane, and stepping high in time to the droning music, the
calico pony turned the corner and followed on at the rear of the
procession.
"Why--why," gasped Dot, "I don't want to go to a funeral. You stop him,
Sammy Pinkney."
"Can't we turn him up a side street, Sammy?" whispered Tess.
Everybody was looking from the sidewalk and from the houses they passed.
It was a ridiculous situation. The solemn, slow notes of the band seemed
just suited to Scalawag's leisurely action. He kept perfect time.
"And they're goin' to march clear out to the Calvary Cemetery!"
ejaculated Sammy. "It's four miles!"