INTRODUCTIONS
"Oh, goodness to gracious! Here comes old Mr. Abel--and he has fire in
his eye, Ruth!" gasped Agnes.
"What--what's he going to do?" stammered Ruth, clinging to Agnes' hand
under the hymn-book which they shared together.
"Something awful! Poor Neale!"
"His head looks a fright," declared Ruth.
"And everybody's laughing," groaned Agnes.
"Girls!" admonished Mrs. MacCall, "try to behave."
The creaking of the deacon's boots drew near. Old Mr. Abel kept a
cut-price shoe shop and it was a joke among the young folk of Milton
that all the shoes he sold were talking shoes, for when you walked in
them they said very plainly:
"Cheap! cheap! cheap!"
Soon the minister noted the approach of Deacon Abel. As the old man
stopped by the Kenway pew, the minister lost the thread of his
discourse, and stopped. A dread silence fell upon the church.
The deacon leaned forward in front of the little girls and Mrs. MacCall.
His face was very red, and he shook an admonitory finger at the startled
Neale O'Neil.
"Young man!" he said, sonorously. "Young man, you take off that wig and
put it in your pocket--or leave this place of worship immediately."
It was an awful moment--especially awful for everybody in the Kenway
pew. The girls' cheeks burned. Mrs. MacCall glared at the boy in utter
stupefaction.
Deacon Abel was a very stern man indeed--much more so than the clergyman
himself. All the young folk of the congregation stood in particular awe
of him.
But poor Neale O'Neil, unconscious of any wrong intent, merely gazed at
the old gentleman in surprise. "Wha--wha--_what_?" he gasped.
"Get out of here, young man!" exclaimed the deacon. "You have got the
whole crowd by the ears. A most disgraceful exhibition. If I had the
warming of your jacket I certainly would be glad."
"Oh!" exclaimed Ruth, horrified.
Agnes was really angry. She was an impulsive girl and she could not fail
to espouse the cause of anybody whom she considered "put upon." She rose
right up when Neale stumbled to his feet.
"Never you mind, Neale!" she whispered, shrilly. "He's a mean old thing!
I'm coming, too."
It was a very wrong thing to say, but Agnes never stopped to think how a
thing was going to sound when she was angry. The boy, his face aflame,
got out through the next pew, which chanced to be empty, and Agnes
followed right on behind him before Ruth could pull her back into her
seat.
Nobody could have stopped her. She felt that Neale O'Neil was being
ill-treated, and whatever else you could say about Aggie Kenway, you
could not truthfully say that she was not loyal to her friends.
"Cheap! cheap! cheap!" squeaked the deacon's boots as he went back up
one aisle while the boy and girl hurried up the other. It seemed to
Neale as though the church was filled with eyes, staring at him.
His red face was a fine contrast for his rainbow-hued hair, but Agnes
was as white as chalk.
The minister took up his discourse almost immediately, but it seemed to
the culprits making their way to the door as though the silence had held
the congregation for an hour! They were glad to get through the baize
doors and let them swing together behind them.
Neale clapped his cap on his head, hiding a part of the ruin, but Deacon
Abel came out and attacked him hotly:
"What do you mean by such disgraceful actions, boy?" he asked, with
quivering voice. "I don't know who you are--you are a stranger to me;
but I warn you never to come here and play such jokes again----"
"It isn't a joke, Mr. Abel!" cried Agnes.
"What do you call it, then? Isn't that one of them new-fangled wigs I
read folks in the city wear to dances and other affairs? What's he got
it on for?"
"It isn't a wig," Agnes said, while Neale clutched wildly at his hair.
"Don't tell me it's his own hair!" almost shouted the old gentleman.
"What's the matter with my hair?" demanded the puzzled boy.
"Doesn't he know? Do you mean to say he doesn't know what his head looks
like?" cried the amazed deacon. "Come! come into this room, boy, and
look at your hair."
There was the ushers' dressing-room at one end of the vestibule; he led
Neale in by the arm. In the small mirror on the wall the boy got a
fairly accurate picture of his hirsute adornment.
Without a word--after his first gasp of amazement--Neale turned and
walked out of the room, and out of the church. It was a hot Sunday and
the walks were bathed in sunshine. Neale involuntarily took the path
across the Parade in the direction of the old Corner House.
At this hour--in the middle of sermon time--there was scarcely anybody
in sight. Milton observed Sunday most particularly--especially in this
better quarter of the town.
Neale had gone some way before he realized that Agnes was just beside
him. He looked around at her and now his face was very pale.
"What did you come for?" he asked her, ungraciously enough.
"I'm so sorry, Neale," the girl whispered, drawing nearer to his elbow.
The boy stared for a moment, and then exclaimed: "Why, Aggie! you're a
good little sport, all right."
Aggie blushed vividly, but she hastened to say: "Why did you do it,
Neale?"
"I--I can't tell you," replied the boy, in some confusion. "Only I got
to change the color of my hair."
"But, mercy! you needn't have changed it to so many colors all at once!"
cried she.
"Huh! do you think--like that old man--that I did it a-purpose?"
"But you _did_ dye it!"
"I tried to."
"That was the stuff you were buying yesterday in the drugstore?" she
queried.
"Yes. And I put it on just before I started for church. He said it would
make the hair a beautiful brown."
"_Who_ said so?"
"That drugstore clerk," said Neale, despondently.
"He never sold you hair-dye at all!"
"Goodness knows what it was----"
"It's stained your collar--and it's run down your neck and dyed _that_
green."
"Do you suppose I can ever get it off, Aggie?" groaned the boy.
"We'll try. Come on home and we'll get a lot of soapsuds in a tub in the
woodshed--so we can splash it if we want to," said the suddenly
practical Agnes.
They reached the woodshed without being observed by Uncle Rufus. Agnes
brought the water and the soap and a hand-brush from the kitchen. Neale
removed his collar and tie, and turned back the neck of his shirt. Agnes
aproned her Sunday frock and went to work.
But, sad to relate, the more she scrubbed, and the more Neale suffered,
the worse his hair looked!
"Goodness, Aggie!" he gasped at last. "My whole scalp is as sore as a
boil. I don't believe I can stand your scrubbing it any more."
"I don't mean to hurt you, Neale," panted Agnes.
"I know it. But isn't the color coming out?"
"I--I guess it's _set_. Maybe I've done more harm than good. It's a sort
of a sickly green all over. I never _did_ see such a head of hair,
Neale! And it was so pretty before."
"_Pretty!_" growled Neale O'Neil. "It was a nuisance. Everybody who ever
saw me remembered me as the 'white-haired boy.'"
"Well," sighed Agnes, "whoever sees that hair of yours _now_ will
remember you, and no mistake."
"And I have to go to school with it to-morrow," groaned Neale.
"It will grow out all right--in time," said the girl, trying to be
comforting.
"It'll take more time than I want to spend with green hair," returned
Neale. "I see what I'll have to do, Aggie."
"What's that?"
"Get a Riley cut. I don't know but I'd better be _shaved_."
"Oh, Neale! you'll look so funny," giggled Agnes, suddenly becoming
hysterical.
"That's all right. You have a right to laugh," said Neale, as Agnes fell
back upon a box to have her laugh out. "But I won't be any funnier
looking with _no_ hair than I would be with green hair--make up your
mind to that."
Neale slipped over the back fence into Mr. Murphy's premises, before the
rest of the Kenway family came home, and the girls did not see him again
that day.
"How the folks stared at us!" Ruth said, shaking her head. "It would
have been all right if you hadn't gotten up and gone out with him,
Aggie."
"Oh, yes! let that horrid old Deacon Abel put him out of church just as
though he were a stray dog, and belonged to nobody!" cried Agnes.
"Well, he doesn't belong to us, does he?" asked Dot, wonderingly.
"We're the only folks he has, I guess, Dot," said Tess, as Agnes went
off with her head in the air.
"He has Mr. Murphy--and the pig," said Dot, slowly. "But I like Neale.
Only I wish he hadn't painted his hair so funny."
"I'd like to have boxed his ears--that I would!" said Mrs. MacCall, in
vexation. "I thought gals was crazy enough nowadays; but to think of a
_boy_ dyeing his hair!"
Aunt Sarah shook her head and pursed her lips, as one who would say, "I
knew that fellow would come to some bad end." But Uncle Rufus, having
heard the story, chuckled unctuously to himself.
"Tell yo' what, chillen," he said to the girls, "it 'mind me ob de time
w'en my Pechunia was a young, flighty gal. Dese young t'ings, dey ain't
nebber satisfied wid de way de good Lawd make 'em.
"I nebber did diskiver w'y Pechunia was so brack, as I say afore. But
'tain't an affliction. She done t'ink it was. She done talk erbout
face-bleach, an' powder, an' somet'ing she call 'rooch' wot white
sassiety wimmens fixes up deir faces wid, an' says she ter me, 'Pap, I
is gwine fin' some ob dese yere fixin's fur my complexion.'
"'Yo' go 'long,' I says ter her. 'Yo's a _fast_ brack, an' dat's all
dere is to hit. Ef all de watah an' soap yo' done use ain't take no
particle of dat soot off'n yo' yit, dere ain't nottin' eber _will_
remove it.'
"But yo' kyan't change a gal's natur. Pechunia done break her back ober
de washtub ter earn de money to buy some o' dem make-up stuff, an' she
goes down ter de drug sto' ter mak' her purchases. She 'low ter spen'
much as six bits fer de trash.
"An' firs' t'ing she axed for was face powder--aw, my glo-_ree_! De
clerk ask her: 'Wot shade does yo' want, Ma'am? An' Pechunia giggles an'
replies right back:
"'Flesh color, Mister.'
"An' wot you t'ink dat young scalawag ob a clerk gib her?" chuckled
Uncle Rufus, rolling his eyes and shaking his head in delight. "W'y, he
done gib her _powdered charcoal_! Dat finish Pechunia. She nebber tried
to buy nottin' mo' for her complexion--naw, indeedy!"
The girls of the old Corner House learned that Neale was up early on
Monday morning, having remained in hiding the remainder of Sunday. He
sought out a neighbor who had a pair of sheep-shears, and Mr. Murphy
cropped the boy's hair close to his scalp. The latter remained a
pea-green color and being practically hairless, Neale looked worse than
a Mexican dog!
He was not at all the same looking youth who had dawned on Agnes' vision
the Monday morning previous, and had come to her rescue. She said
herself she never would have known him.
"Oh, dear!" she said to Ruth. "He looks like a gnome out of a funny
picture-book."
But Neale O'Neil pulled his cap down to his ears and followed behind the
Kenway girls to school. He was too proud and too sensitive to walk with
them.
He knew that he was bound to be teased by the boys at school, when once
they saw his head. Even the old cobbler had said to him:
"'Tis a foine lookin' noddle ye have now. Ye look like a tinder grane
onion sproutin' out of the garden in the spring. Luk out as ye go over
th' fince, me la-a-ad, for if that ormadhoun of a goat sees ye, he'll
ate ye alive!"
This was at the breakfast table, and Neale had flushed redly, being half
angry with the old fellow.
"That's right, la-a-ad," went on Mr. Murphy. "Blushin' ain't gone out o'
fashion where you kem from, I'm glad ter see. An' begorra! ye're more
pathriotic than yer name implies, for I fear that's Scotch instead of
Irish. I see now ye've put the grane above the red!"
So Neale went to school on this first day in no very happy frame of
mind. He looked so much different with his hair cropped, from what he
had at church on Sunday, that few of the young folks who had observed
his disgrace there, recognized him--for which the boy was exceedingly
glad.
He remained away from the Kenway girls, and in that way escaped
recognition. He had to get acquainted with some of the
fellows--especially those of the highest grammar grade. Being a new
scholar, he had to meet the principal of the school, as well as Miss
Shipman.
"Take your cap off, sir," said Mr. Marks, sternly. Unwillingly enough he
did so. "For goodness' sake! what have you been doing to your head?"
demanded the principal.
"Getting my hair clipped, sir," said Neale.
"But the color of your head?"
"That's why I had the hair clipped."
"What did you do to it?"
"It was an accident, sir," said Neale. "But I can study just as well."
"We will hope so," said the principal, his eyes twinkling. "But green is
not a promising color."
Ruth had taken Dot to the teacher of the first grade, primary, and Dot
was made welcome by several little girls whom she had met at Sunday
school during the summer. Then Ruth hurried to report to the principal
of the Milton High School, with whom she had already had an interview.
Tess found her grade herself. It was the largest room in the whole
building and was presided over by Miss Andrews--a lady of most uncertain
age and temper, and without a single twinkle in her grey-green eyes.
But with Tess were several girls she knew--Mable Creamer; Margaret and
Holly Pease; Maria Maroni, whose father kept the vegetable and fruit
stand in the cellar of one of the Stower houses on Meadow Street; Uncle
Rufus' granddaughter, Alfredia (with the big red ribbon bow); and a
little Yiddish girl named Sadie Goronofsky, who lived with her
step-mother and a lot of step-brothers and sisters in another of the
tenements on Meadow Street which had been owned so many years by Uncle
Peter Stower.
Agnes and Neale O 'Neil met in the same grade, but they did not have a
chance to speak, for the boys sat on one side of the room, and the girls
on the other.
The second Kenway girl had her own troubles. During the weeks she lived
at the old Corner House, she had been looking forward to entering school
in the fall, so she had met all the girls possible who were to be in her
grade.
Now she found that, school having opened, the girls fell right back into
their old associations. There were the usual groups, or cliques. She
would have to earn her place in the school, just as though she did not
know a soul.
Beatrice, or "Trix" Severn, was not one of those whom Agnes was anxious
to be friendly with; and here Trix was in the very seat beside her,
while Eva Larry and Myra Stetson were across the room!
The prospect looked cloudy to Agnes, and she began the first school
session with less confidence than any of her sisters.