AGNES LOSES HER TEMPER AND DOT HER TOOTH
It was on this morning--Friday, ever a fateful day according to the
superstitiously inclined--that the incident of the newspaper
advertisement arose.
The paper boy had very early thrown the Kenways' copy of the Milton
_Morning Post_ upon the front veranda. Aunt Sarah spent part of each
forenoon reading that gossipy sheet. She insisted upon seeing the paper
just as regularly as she insisted upon having her five cents' worth of
peppermint-drops to take to church in her pocket on Sunday morning.
But on this particular morning she did not take the paper in before
going to her room after breakfast, and Neale strolled out and picked up
the sheet.
Ruth was behind him, but he did not know of her presence. She had been
about to secure the morning paper and run upstairs with it, to save Aunt
Sarah the bother of coming down again. As she was about to ask the boy
for it, Ruth noticed that he was staring rigidly at the still folded
paper. His eyes were fixed upon something that appeared in the very
first column of the _Post_.
Now, the _Morning Post_ devoted the first column of its front page to
important announcements and small advertisements--like "Lost and Found,"
the death and marriage notices, and "personals." Agnes called it the
"Agony Column," for the "personals" always headed it.
Ruth was sure Neale was staring at something printed very near the top
of the column. He stood there, motionless, long enough to have read any
ordinary advertisement half a dozen times.
Then he laid the paper quietly on one of the porch chairs and tiptoed
off the veranda, disappearing around the corner of the house without
looking back once; so Ruth did not see his face.
"What can be the matter with him?" murmured Ruth, and seized the paper
herself.
She swiftly scrutinized the upper division of the first column of type.
There were the usual requests for the return of absent friends, and
several cryptic messages understood only by the advertiser and the
person to whom the message was addressed.
The second "Personal" was different. It read as follows:
STRAYED,OR RUNAWAY FROM HIS GUARDIAN:--Boy, 15, slight figure,
very light hair, may call himself Sorber, or Jakeway. His Guardian
will pay FIFTY DOLLARS for information of his safety, or for his
recovery. Address Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and
Menagerie, _en-route_.
Ruth read this through; but she read it idly. It made no more
appeal to her just then than did half a dozen of the other
advertisements--"personal," or otherwise.
So she carried the paper slowly upstairs, wondering all the time what
Neale O'Neil could have seen in the column of advertising to so affect
him. Perhaps had Agnes been at hand to discuss the matter, together the
girls might have connected the advertisement of the tow-headed boy with
Neale O'Neil.
But Agnes was out on an errand, and when she did return she was so full
herself of something which she wished to tell Ruth that she quite drove
thought of the white-haired boy, for the time being, out of the older
girl's mind. As soon as she saw Ruth she began her tale.
"What do you think, Ruthie Kenway? I just met Eva Larry on the Parade,
and that Trix Severn was with her. You know that Trix Severn?"
"Beatrice Severn? Yes," said Ruth, placidly. "A very well-dressed girl.
Her parents must be well off."
"Her father is Terrence Severn, and he keeps a summer hotel at Pleasant
Cove. But I don't like her. And I'm not going to like Eva if she makes a
friend of that Trix," cried Agnes, stormily.
"Now, Agnes! don't be foolish," admonished Ruth.
"You wait till you hear what that nasty Trix said to me--about us all!"
"Why, she can't hurt us--much--no matter what she says," Ruth declared,
still calmly.
"You can talk! I'm just going to tell Eva she needn't ask me to walk
with her again when Trix is with her. I came along behind them across
the Parade Ground and Eva called me. I didn't like Trix before, and I
tried to get away.
"'I've got to hurry, Eva,' I said. 'Mrs. MacCall is waiting for this
soap-powder.'
"'I should think you Corner House girls could afford to hire somebody to
run your errands, if you've got all the money they say you have,' says
Trix Severn--just like that!"
"What did you reply, Aggie!" asked the older Kenway girl.
"'It doesn't matter how much, or how little, money we have,' I told
her," said Agnes, "'there's no lazy-bones in our family, thank
goodness!' For Eva told me that Trix's mother doesn't get up till noon
and that their house is all at sixes and sevens."
"Oh! that sharp tongue of yours," said Ruth, admonishingly.
"I hope she took it," declared Agnes, savagely. "She said to me: 'Oh!
people who haven't been used to leisure don't really know how to enjoy
money, I suppose, when they _do_ get it.'
"'You needn't worry, Miss,' I said. 'We get all the fun there is going,
and don't have to be idle, either. And whoever told _you_ we weren't
used to money before we came to Milton?'"
"Fie! Fie, Aggie! That was in the worst possible taste," cried Ruth.
"I don't care," exclaimed Agnes, stormily. "She's a nasty thing! And
when I hurried on, I heard her laugh and say to Eva:
"'"Put a beggar on horseback," you know. Miss Titus, the dressmaker,
says those Kenways never had two cents to bless themselves with before
old crazy Peter Stower died and left them all that money.'"
"Well, dear, I wouldn't make a mountain out of a molehill," said Ruth,
quietly. "If you don't like Beatrice Severn, you need not associate with
her--not even if she is going to be in your grade at school. But I would
not quarrel with my best friend about her. That's hardly worth while, is
it?"
"I don't know whether I consider Eva Larry my best friend, or not," said
Agnes, reflectively. "Myra Stetson is lots nicer in some ways."
That was Agnes' way. She was forever having a "crush" on some girl or
other, getting suddenly over it, and seeking another affinity with
bewildering fickleness. Eva Larry had been proclaimed her dearest friend
for a longer term than most who had preceded her.
There was too much to do in completing the housecleaning task to spend
either breath, or time, in discussing Beatrice Severn and her impudent
tongue. A steady "rap, rap, rapping" from the back lawn told the story
of Neale and the parlor rugs.
"There!" cried Ruth, suddenly, from the top of the stepladder, where she
was wiping the upper shelves in the dining-room china closet. "There's
one rug in the sitting room I didn't take out last evening. Will you get
it, Aggie, and give it to Neale?"
Willing Agnes started at once. She literally ran to the sitting-room and
banged open the door.
All this time we have left Dot--and her sore tooth--behind this very
door! She had selected the wrong side of the door upon which to crouch,
waiting for Fate--in the person of an unknowing sister--to pull the
tooth.
The door opened inward, and against the slumbering little girl on the
hassock. Instead of jerking the tooth out by pulling open the door,
Agnes banged the door right against the unconscious Dot--and so hard
that Dot and her hassock were flung some yards out upon the floor. Her
forehead was bumped and a great welt raised upon it.
The smallest Kenway voiced her surprise and anguish in no uncertain
terms. Everybody in the house came running to the rescue. Even Aunt
Sarah came to the top of the stairs and wanted to know "if that young
one was killed?"
"No-o-o!" sobbed Dot, answering for herself. "No--no-o-o, Aunt Sarah.
_Not yet._"
But Mrs. MacCall had brought the arnica bottle and the bruise was soon
treated. While they were all comforting her, in staggered Neale with a
number of rugs on his shoulder.
"Hello!" he demanded. "Who's murdered this time?"
"Me," proclaimed Dot, with confidence.
"Oh-ho! Are you making all that noise about losing a little old tooth?
But you got it pulled, didn't you?"
Dot clapped a tentative finger into her mouth. When she drew it forth,
it was with a pained and surprised expression. The place where the tooth
should have been was empty.
"There it is," chuckled Neale, "hanging on the doorknob. Didn't I tell
you that was the way to get your tooth pulled?"
"My!" gasped Dot. "It wasn't pulled out of me, you see. When Aggie ran
in and knocked me over, _I was just putted away from the tooth_!"
They all burst out laughing at that, and Dot laughed with them. She
recovered more quickly from the loss of her tooth than Agnes did from
the loss of her temper!