CRACKERS--AND A TOOTHACHE
The arc light at the corner of Main Street vied with a faint moon in
illuminating the passages and corridors of the old Corner House. Deep
shadows lay in certain corners and at turns in the halls and staircases;
but Neale O'Neil was not afraid of the dark.
The distant laughter spurred him to find the girls' room. He wanted to
get square with Agnes, whom he believed had put the bag of crackers
beside his bed.
But suddenly a door slammed, and then there was a great silence over the
house. From the outside Neale could easily have identified the girls'
room. He had seen Aggie climb out of one of the windows of the chamber
in question that very morning.
But in a couple of minutes he had to acknowledge that he was completely
turned about in this house. He did not know that he had been put to
sleep in another wing from that in which the girls' rooms were situated.
Only Uncle Rufus slept in this wing besides himself, and he in another
story higher.
The white-haired boy came finally to the corridor leading to the main
staircase. This was more brilliantly lighted by the electric lamp on the
street. He stepped lightly forward and saw a faint light from a transom
over one of the front room doors.
"That's where those girls sleep, I bet!" whispered Neale to himself.
The transom was open. There was a little rustling sound within. Then the
light went out.
Neale broke the string and opened the bag of crackers. They were of the
thick, hard variety known in New England as "Boston" crackers. He took
out one and weighed it in his hand. It made a very proper missile.
With a single jerk of his arm he scaled the cracker through the open
transom. There was a slight scuffle within, following the cracker's
fall.
He paused a moment and then threw a second and a third. Each time the
rustling was repeated, and Neale kept up the bombardment believing that,
although the girls did not speak, the shower of crackers was falling
upon the guilty.
One after the other he flung the crackers through the transom until they
were all discharged. Not a sound now from the bombarded quarters.
Chuckling, Neale stole away, sure that he would have a big laugh on
Agnes in the morning.
But before he got back into his wing of the house, he spied a candle
with a girl in a pink kimono behind it.
"Whatever do you want out here, Neale O'Neil? A drink?"
It was Ruth. Neale was full of tickle over his joke, and he had to
relate it.
"I've just been paying off that smart sister of yours in her own coin,"
he chuckled.
"Which smart sister?"
"Why, Agnes."
"But how?"
Neale told her how he had found the bag of crackers on the table beside
his bed. "Nobody but Aggie would be up to such a trick, I know,"
chuckled Neale. "So I just pitched 'em all through the transom at her."
"What transom?" gasped Ruth, in dismay. "Where did you throw them?"
"Why, right through _that_ one," and Neale pointed. "Isn't that the room
you and Aggie occupy?"
"My goodness' sakes alive!" cried Ruth, awe-struck. "What _have_ you
done, Neale O'Neil? _That's Aunt Sarah's room._"
Ruth rushed to the door, tried it, found it unbolted, and ran in. Her
candle but dimly revealed the apartment; but it gave light enough to
show that Aunt Sarah was not in evidence.
Almost in the middle of the room stood the big "four-poster," with
canopy and counterpane, the fringe of which reached almost to the rag
carpet that covered the floor. A cracker crunched under Ruth's
slipper-shod foot. Indeed, crackers were everywhere! No part of the
room--save beneath the bed itself--had escaped the bombardment.
"Mercy on us!" gasped Ruth, and ran to the bed. She lifted a corner of
the counterpane and peered under. A pair of bare heels were revealed and
beyond them--supposedly--was the remainder of Aunt Sarah!
"Aunt Sarah! Aunt Sarah! do come out," begged Ruth.
"The ceilin's fallin', Niece Ruth," croaked the old lady. "This rickety
old shebang is a-fallin' to pieces at last. I allus told your Uncle
Peter it would."
"No, no, Aunt Sarah, it's all right!" cried Ruth. Then she remembered
Neale and knew if she told the story bluntly, Aunt Sarah would never
forgive the boy.
"Do, _do_ come out," she begged, meanwhile scrambling about, herself, to
pick up the crackers. She collected most of them that were whole easily
enough. But some had broken and the pieces had scattered far and wide.
With some difficulty the old lady crept out from under the far side of
the bed. She was ready to retire, her nightcap securely tied under her
chin, and all.
When Ruth, much troubled by a desire to laugh, asked her, she explained
that the first missile had landed upon her head while she was kneeling
beside the bed at her devotions.
"I got up and another of the things hit me on the ear," pursued Aunt
Sarah, short and sharp. "Another landed in the small of my back, and I
went over into that corner. But pieces of the ceiling were droppin' all
over and no matter where I got to, they hit me. So I dove under the
bed----"
"Oh! you poor, dear Auntie!"
"If the dratted ceilin's all comin' down, this ain't no place for us to
stay," quoth Aunt Sarah.
"I am sure it is all over," urged Ruth. "But if you'd like to go to
another room----?"
"And sleep in a bed that ain't been aired in a dog's age?" snapped Aunt
Sarah. "I guess not."
"Then, will you come and sleep with me? Aggie can go into the children's
room."
"No. If you are sure there ain't no more goin' to fall?"
"I am positive, Auntie."
"Then I'm going to bed," declared the old lady. "But I allus told Peter
this old place was bound to go to rack and ruin because o' his
miserliness."
Ruth waited till her aunt got into bed, where she almost at once fell
asleep. Then the girl scrambled for the remainder of the broken crackers
and carried them all out into the hall in the trash basket.
Neale O'Neil was sitting on the top step of the front stairs, waiting
for her appearance.
"Well! I guess I did it that time," he said. "She looked at me savage
enough to bite, at supper. What's she going to do now--have me arrested
and hung?" and he grinned suddenly.
"Oh, Neale!" gasped Ruth, overcome with laughter. "How could you?"
"I thought you girls were in there. I was giving Aggie her crackers
back," Neale grunted.
Ruth explained to him how the crackers had come to be left in his room.
Agnes had had nothing to do with it. "I guess the joke is on you, after
all, Neale," she said, obliged to laugh in the end.
"Or on that terrible old lady."
"But she doesn't know it is a joke. I don't know what she'll say
to-morrow when she sees that none of the ceiling has fallen."
Fortunately Aunt Sarah supplied an explanation herself--and nothing
could have shaken her belief in her own opinion. One of her windows was
dropped down half way from the top. She was sure that some "rascally
boy" outside (she glared at Neale O'Neil when she said it at the
breakfast table) had thrown crackers through the window. She had found
some of the crumbs.
"And I'll ketch him some day, and then----" She shook her head grimly
and relapsed into her accustomed silence.
So Neale did not have to confess his fault and try to make peace with
Aunt Sarah. It would have been impossible for him to do this last, Ruth
was sure.
But the story of the bag of crackers delighted Agnes. She teased Neale
about it unmercifully, and he showed himself to be better-natured and
more patient, than Ruth had at first supposed him to be.
The next few days following the appearance of Neale O'Neil at the old
Corner House were busy ones indeed. School would open the next week and
there was lots to do before that important event.
Brooms searched out dust, long-handled brushes searched out cobwebs, and
the first and second floors of the old Corner House were subjected to a
thorough renovation.
Above that the girls and Mrs. MacCall decided not to go. The third floor
rooms were scarcely ever entered, save by Sandyface and her kittens in
search of mice. As for the great garret that ran the full width of the
front of the house, _that_ had been cleaned so recently (at the time of
the "Ghost Party," which is told of in the first volume of this series)
that there was no necessity of mounting so high.
The stranger boy who had come to the old Corner House so opportunely,
proved himself of inestimable value in the work in hand. Uncle Rufus was
saved many a groan by that lively youth, and Mrs. MacCall and the girls
pronounced him a valuable assistant.
The young folk were resting on the back porch on Thursday afternoon,
chattering like magpies, when suddenly Neale O'Neil spied a splotch of
brilliant color coming along Willow Street.
"What do you call this?" demanded he. "Is it a locomotive headlight?"
"Oh! what a ribbon!" gasped Agnes.
"I declare!" said Tess, in her old-fashioned way. "That is Alfredia
Blossom. And what a great bow of ribbon she has tied on her head. It's
big enough for a sash, Dot."
"Looks like a house afire," commented Neale again.
By this time Alfredia's smiling face was recognizable under the flaming
red bow, and Ruth explained:
"She is one of Uncle Rufus' grand-daughters. Her mother, Petunia
Blossom, washes for us, and Alfredia is dragging home the wash in that
little wagon."
The ribbon, Alfredia wore was at least four inches wide and it was tied
in front at the roots of her kinky hair into a bow, the wings of which
stuck out on each side like a pair of elephant ears.
The little colored girl came in at the side gate, drawing the
wash-basket after her.
"How-do, Miss Ruthie--and Miss Aggie? How-do, Tessie and Dottie? You-all
gwine to school on Monday?"
"All of us are going, Alfredia," proclaimed Tess. "Are you going?"
"Mammy done said I could," said Alfredia, rolling her eyes. "But I dunno
fo' sho'."
"Why don't you know?" asked Agnes, the curious.
"Dunno as I got propah clo'es to wear, honey. Got ter look mighty
fetchin' ter go ter school--ya-as'm!"
"Is that why you've got that great bow on your head?" giggled Agnes. "To
make you look 'fetching'?"
"Naw'm. I put dat ol' red sash-bow up dar to 'tract 'tention."
"To attract attention?" repeated Ruth. "Why do you want to attract
attention?"
"I don't _wanter_, Miss Ruthie."
"Then why do you wear it?"
"So folkses will look at my haid."
Agnes and Neale were vastly amused, but Ruth pursued her inquiry. She
wished to get to the bottom of the mystery:
"Why do you want folks to look at your head, Alfredia?"
"So dey won't look at my feet. I done got holes in my shoes--an' dey is
Mammy's shoes, anyway. Do you 'spects I kin git by wid 'em on
Monday--for dey's de on'iest shoes I got ter wear?"
The Kenways laughed--they couldn't help it. But Ruth did not let the
colored girl go away without a pair of half-worn footwear of Agnes' that
came somewhere near fitting Alfredia.
"It's just so nice to have so many things that we can afford to give
some away," sighed Agnes. "My! my! but we ought to be four happy girls."
One of the Corner House girls was far from happy the next day. Dot came
down to breakfast with a most woebegone face, and tenderly caressing her
jaw. She had a toothache, and a plate of mush satisfied her completely
at the table.
"I--I can't che-e-e-ew!" she wailed, when she tried a bit of toast.
"I am ashamed of you, Dot," said Tess, earnestly. "That tooth is just a
little wabbly one, and you ought to have it pulled."
"Ow! don't you touch it!" shrieked Dot.
"I'm not going to," said Tess. "I was reaching for some more butter for
my toast--not for your tooth."
"We-ell!" confessed the smallest Kenway; "it just _jumps_ when anybody
comes toward it."
"Be a brave little girl and go with sister to the dentist," begged Ruth.
"No--please--Ruthie! I can't," wailed Dot.
"Let sister tie a stout thread around it, and you pull it out yourself,"
suggested Ruth, as a last resort.
Finally Dot agreed to this. That is, she agreed to have the thread tied
on. Neale climbed the back fence into Mr. Murphy's premises and obtained
a waxed-end of the cobbler. This, he said, would not slip, and Ruth
managed to fasten the thread to the root of the little tooth.
"One good jerk, and it's all over!" proclaimed Agnes.
But this seemed horrible to Dot. The tender little gum was sore, and the
nerve telegraphed a sense of acute pain to Dot's mind whenever she
touched the tooth. One good jerk, indeed!
"I tell you what to do," said Neale to the little girl. "You tie the
other end of that waxed-end to a doorknob, and sit down and wait.
Somebody will come through the door after a while and jerk the tooth
right out!"
"Oh!" gasped Dot.
"Go ahead and try it, Dot," urged Agnes. "I'm afraid you are a little
coward."
This accusation from her favorite sister made Dot feel very badly. She
betook herself to another part of the house, the black thread hanging
from her lips.
"What door are you going to sit behind, Dot?" whispered Tess. "I'll come
and do it--_just as easy!_"
"No, you sha'n't!" cried Dot. "You sha'n't know. And I don't want to
know who is going to j-j-jerk it out," and she ran away, sobbing.
Being so busy that morning, the others really forgot the little girl.
None of them saw her take a hassock, put it behind the sitting-room door
that was seldom opened, and after tying the string to the knob, seat
herself upon the hassock and wait for something to happen.
She waited. Nobody came near that room. The sun shone warmly in at the
windows, the bees buzzed, and Dot grew drowsy. Finally she fell fast
asleep with her tooth tied to the doorknob.