NEALE IN DISGUISE
The Parade Ground was in the center of Milton. Its lower end bordered
Willow Street, and the old Corner House was right across from the
termination of the Parade's principal shaded walk.
Ranged all around the Parade (which had in colonial days been called
"the training ground" where the local militia-hands drilled) were the
principal public buildings of the town, although the chief business
places were situated down Main Street, below the Corner House.
The brick courthouse with its tall, square tower, occupied a prominent
situation on the Parade. The several more important church edifices,
too, faced the great, open common. Interspersed were the better
residences of Milton. Some of these were far more modern than the old
Stower homestead, but to the Kenway girls none seemed more homelike in
appearance.
At the upper end of the Parade were grouped the schools of the town.
There was a handsome new high school that Ruth was going to enter; the
old one was now given over to the manual training departments. The
grammar and primary school was a large, sprawling building with plenty
of entrances and exits, and in this structure the other three Kenway
girls found their grades.
The quartette of Corner House girls were not the only young folk anxious
about entering the Milton schools for the forthcoming year. There was
Neale O'Neil. The Kenways knew by the way he spoke, that his expected
experiences at school were uppermost in his thoughts all the time.
Ruth had talked the matter over with Mrs. MacCall, although she had not
seen Mr. Howbridge, and they had decided that the boy was a very welcome
addition to the Corner House household, if he would stay.
But Neale O'Neil did not want charity--nor would he accept anything that
savored of it for long. Even while he was so busy helping the girls
clean house, he had kept his eyes and ears open for a permanent lodging.
And on Saturday morning he surprised Ruth by announcing that he would
leave them after supper that night.
"Why, Neale! where are you going?" asked the oldest Corner House girl.
"I am sure there is room enough for you here."
"I know all about that," said Neale, grinning quickly at her. "You folks
are the best ever."
"Then, why----?"
"I've made a dicker with Mr. Con Murphy. You see, I won't be far from
you girls if you want me any time," he pursued.
"You are going to live with Mr. Murphy?"
"Yes. He's got a spare room--and it's very neat and clean. There's a
woman comes in and 'does' for him, as he calls it. He needs a chap like
me to give him a hand now and then--taking care of the pig and his
garden, you know."
"Not in the winter, Neale," said Ruth, gently. "I hope you are not
leaving us for any foolish reason. You are perfectly welcome to stay.
You ought to know that."
"That is fine of you, Ruth," he said, gratefully. "But you don't _need_
me here. I can feel more independent over there at Murphy's. And I shall
be quite all right there, I assure you."
The house was now all to rights--"spick and span," Mrs. MacCall
said--and Saturday was given up to preparing for the coming school term.
It was the last day of the long vacation.
Dot had no loose tooth to worry her and she was busy, with Tess, in
preparing the dolls' winter nursery. All summer the little girls had
played in the rustic house in the garden, but now that September had
come, an out-of-door playroom would soon be too cold.
Although the great garret made a grand playroom for all hands on stormy
days, Ruth thought it too far for Dot and Tess to go to the top of the
house alone to play with their dolls. For her dolls were of as much
importance to Dot as her own eating or sleeping. She lived in a little
world of her own with the Alice-doll and all her other "children"; and
she no more thought of neglecting them for a day than she and Tess
neglected Billy Bumps or the cats.
There was no means of heating the garret, so a room in the wing with
their bed chambers, and which was heated from the cellar furnace, was
given up to "the kiddies'" nursery.
There were many treasures to be taken indoors, and Dot and Tess toiled
out of the garden, and up the porch steps, and through the hall, and
climbed the stairs to the new playroom--oh! so many times.
Mr. Stetson, the groceryman, came with an order just as Dot was toiling
along with an armful to the porch.
"Hello! hello!" he exclaimed. "Don't you want some help with all that
load, Miss Dorothy?" She was a special favorite of his, and he always
stopped to talk with her.
"Ruthie says we got to move all by ourselves--Tess and me," said Dot,
with a sigh. "I'm just as much obliged to you, but I guess you can't
help."
She had sat down on the porch steps and Sandyface came, purring, to rub
against her.
"You can go right away, Sandy!" said Dot, sternly. "I don't like
you--much. You went and sat right down in the middle of my Alice-doll's
old cradle, and on her best knit coverlet, and went to sleep--and you're
moulting! I'll never get the hairs off of that quilt."
"Moulting, eh!" chuckled Mr. Stetson. "Don't you mean shedding?"
"We--ell, maybe," confessed Dot. "But the hens' feathers are coming out
and they're moulting--I heard Ruth say so. So why not cats? Anyway, you
can go away, Sandyface, and stop rubbing them off on _me_."
"What's become of that kitten of yours--Bungle, did you call it?" asked
the groceryman.
"Why, don't you know?" asked Dot, in evident surprise.
"I haven't heard a word," confessed Mr. Stetson. "Did something happen
to it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Was it poisoned?"
"Oh, no!"
"Drowned?"
"No, sir."
"Did somebody steal it?" queried Mr. Stetson.
"No, indeed!"
"Was it hurt in any way?"
"No, sir."
"Well, then," said the groceryman, "I can't guess. What _did_ happen to
Bungle?"
"Why," said Dot, "he growed into a cat!"
That amused Mr. Stetson immensely, and he went away, laughing. "It seems
to me," Dot said, seriously, to Tess, "that it don't take so much to
make grown-up people laugh. Is it funny for a kitten to grow into a
cat?"
Neale disappeared for some time right after dinner. He had done all he
could to help Uncle Rufus and Mrs. MacCall that forenoon, and had
promised Ruth to come back for supper. "I wouldn't miss Mrs. MacCall's
beans and fishcakes for a farm!" he declared, laughing.
But he did not laugh as much as he had when he first came to the old
Corner House. Ruth, at least, noticed the change in him, and, "harking
back," she began to realize that the change had begun just after Neale
had been so startled by the advertisment he had read in the _Morning
Post_.
The two older Kenway girls had errands to do at some of the Main Street
stores that afternoon. It was Agnes who came across Neale O'Neil in the
big pharmacy on the corner of Ralph Street. He was busily engaged with a
clerk at the rear of the store.
"Hello, Neale!" cried Agnes. "What you buying?" Sometimes Agnes'
curiosity went beyond her good manners.
"I'll take this kind," said Neale, hurriedly, touching a bottle at
random, and then turned his back on the counter to greet Agnes. "An
ounce of question-powders to make askits," he said to her, with a grave
and serious air. "_You_ don't need any, do you?"
"Funny!"
"But I don't _look_ as funny as you do," chuckled Neale O'Neil. "That's
the most preposterous looking hat I ever saw, Aggie. And those
rabbit-ears on it!"
"Tow-head!" responded Agnes, with rather crude repartee.
Neale did not usually mind being tweaked about his flaxen hair--at
least, not by the Corner House girls, but Agnes saw his expression
change suddenly, and he turned back to the clerk and received his
package without a word.
"Oh, you needn't get mad," she said, quickly.
"I'm not," responded Neale, briefly, but he paid for his purchase and
hurried away without further remark. Agnes chanced to notice that the
other bottles the clerk was returning to the shelves were all samples of
dyes and "hair-restorers."
"Maybe he's buying something for Mr. Murphy. Mr. Murphy is awfully bald
on top," thought Agnes, and that's all she _did_ think about it until
the next day.
The girls had invited Neale to go to their church, with them and he had
promised to be there. But when they filed in just before the sermon they
saw nothing of the white-haired boy standing about the porch with the
other boys.
"There's somebody in our pew," whispered Tess to Ruth.
"Aunt Sarah?"
"No. Aunt Sarah is in her own seat across the aisle," said Agnes. "Why!
it's a boy."
"It's Neale O'Neil," gasped Ruth. "But _what_ has he done to his hair?"
A glossy brown head showed just above the tall back of the old-fashioned
pew. The sun shining through the long windows on the side of the church
shone upon Neale's thick thatch of hair with iridescent glory. Whenever
he moved his head, the hue of the hair seemed to change--like a piece of
changeable silk!
"That can't be him," said Agnes, with awe. "Where's all his lovely
flaxen hair?"
"The foolish boy! He's dyed it," said Ruth, and then they reached the
pew and could say no more.
Neale had taken the far corner of the pew, so the girls and Mrs. MacCall
filed in without disturbing him. Agnes punched Neale with her elbow and
scowled at him.
"What did you want to do that for?" she hissed.
"Do what for?" he responded, trying to look unconscious.
"You know. Fix your hair like that?"
"Because you called me 'tow-head,'" he whispered, grinning.
When Mrs. MacCall caught her first glimpse of him when they got up to
sing, she started, stared, and almost expressed her opinion aloud.
"What under the canopy's the matter with that boy's head?" she whispered
to Ruth when they were seated again.
And there was reason for asking! As the service proceeded and Neale's
hair grew dryer, the sun shining upon his head revealed a wealth of
iridescence that attracted more attention than the minister's sermon.
The glossy brown gave way before a greenish tinge that changed to purple
at the roots. The dye would have been a success for an Easter egg, but
as an application to the hair, it was not an unqualified delight--at
least, not to the user.
The more youthful and thoughtless of the congregation--especially those
behind the unconscious Neale--found amusement enough in the exhibition.
The pastor discovered it harder than ever that morning to hold the
attention of certain irreverent ones, and being a near-sighted man, he
was at fault as to the reason for the bustle that increased as his
sermon proceeded.
The Corner House girls--especially Ruth and Agnes--began to feel the
matter acutely. Neale was quite unconscious of the result of the dye
upon his hair. As the minutes passed and the rainbow effect became more
and more visible, the disturbance became more pronounced.
Suddenly there sounded the important creaking of Deacon Abel's boots
down the aisle. Agnes flashed a look over her shoulder. The stern old
deacon was aiming straight for their pew!