THE BARN DANCE
Such a "hurly-burly" as there was about the old Corner House on Friday
afternoon! Everybody save Aunt Sarah was on the _qui vive_ over the
Christmas party--for this was the first important social occasion to
which any of the Kenway sisters had been invited since coming to Milton
to live.
Miss Titus, that famous gossip and seamstress, had been called in again,
and the girls all had plenty of up-to-date winter frocks made. Miss
Titus' breezy conversation vastly interested Dot, who often sat silently
nursing her Alice-doll in the sewing room, ogling the seamstress
wonderingly as her tongue ran on. "'N so, you see, he says to her," was
a favorite phrase with Miss Titus.
Mrs. MacCall said the seamstress' tongue was "hung in the middle and ran
at both ends." But Dot's comment was even more to the point. After Miss
Titus had started home after a particularly gossipy day at the old
Corner House, Dot said:
"Ruthie, don't you think Miss Titus seems to know an awful lot of _un-so
news_?"
However, to come to the important Friday of Carrie Poole's party: Ruth
and Agnes were finally dressed. They only _looked_ at their supper. Who
wanted to eat just before going to a real, country barn-dance? That is
what Carrie had promised her school friends.
Ruth and Agnes had their coats and furs on half an hour before Neale
O'Neil came for them. It was not until then that the girls noticed how
really shabby Neale was. His overcoat was thin, and plainly had not been
made for him.
Ruth knew she could not give the proud boy anything of value. He was
making his own way and had refused every offer of assistance they had
made him. He bore his poverty jauntily and held his head so high, and
looked at the world so fearlessly, that it would have taken courage
indeed to have accused him of being in need.
He strutted along beside the girls, his unmittened hands deep in his
pockets. His very cheerfulness denied the cold, and when Ruth timidly
said something about it, Neale said gruffly that "mittens were for
babies!"
It was a lowery evening as the trio of young folk set forth. The clouds
had threatened snow all day, and occasionally a flake--spying out the
land ahead of its vast army of brothers--drifted through the air and
kissed one's cheek.
Ruth, Agnes, and Neale talked of the possible storm, and the coming
Christmas season, and of school, as they hurried along. It was a long
walk out the Buckshot Road until they came in sight of the brilliantly
lighted Poole farmhouse.
It stood at the top of the hill--a famous coasting place--and it looked
almost like a castle, with all its windows alight, and now and then a
flutter of snowflakes falling between the approaching young people and
the lampshine from the doors and windows.
The girls and boys were coming from all directions--some from across the
open, frozen fields, some from crossroads, and other groups, like the
Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil, along the main highway.
Some few came in hacks, or private carriages; but not many. Milton
people were, for the most part, plain folk, and frowned upon any
ostentation.
The Corner House girls and their escort reached the Poole homestead in
good season. The entire lower floor was open to them, save the kitchen,
where Mother Poole and the hired help were busy with the huge supper
that was to be served later.
There was music and singing, and a patheoscope entertainment at first,
while everybody was getting acquainted with everybody else. But the boys
soon escaped to the barn.
The Poole barn was an enormous one. The open floor, with the great mows
on either side, and the forest of rafters overhead, could have
accommodated a full company of the state militia, for its drill and
evolutions.
Under the mows on either hand were the broad stalls for the cattle--the
horses' intelligent heads looking over the mangers at the brilliantly
lighted scene, from one side, while the mild-eyed cows and oxen chewed
their cud on the other side of the barn floor.
All the farm machinery and wagons had been removed, and the open space
thoroughly swept. Rows of Chinese lanterns, carefully stayed so that the
candles should not set them afire, were strung from end to end of the
barn. Overhead the beams of three great lanterns were reflected downward
upon the dancing-floor.
When the boys first began to crowd out to the barn, all the decorating
was not quite finished, and the workmen had left a rope hanging from a
beam above. Some of the boys began swinging on that rope.
"Here's Neale! Here's Neale O'Neil!" cried one of the sixth grade boys
when Neale appeared. "Come on, Neale. Show us what you did on the rope
in the school gym."
Most boys can easily be tempted to "show off" a little when it comes to
gymnastic exercises. Neale seized the rope and began to mount it,
stiff-legged and "hand over hand." It was a feat that a professional
acrobat would have found easy, but that very few but professionals could
have accomplished.
It was when he reached the beam that the boy surprised his mates. He got
his legs over the beam and rested for a moment; then he commenced the
descent.
In some way he wrapped his legs around the rope and, head down, suddenly
shot toward the floor at a fear-exciting pace.
Several of the girls, with Mr. Poole, were just entering the barn. The
girls shrieked, for they thought Neale was falling.
But the boy halted in midflight, swung up his body quickly, seized the
rope again with both hands, and dropped lightly to the floor.
"Bravo!" cried Mr. Poole, leading the applause. "I declare, that was
well done. I saw a boy at Twomley & Sorber's Circus this last summer do
that very thing--and he did it no better."
"Oh, but that couldn't have been Neale, Mr. Poole," Agnes Kenway
hastened to say, "for Neale tells us that he never went to a circus in
his life."
"He might easily be the junior member of an acrobatic troupe, just the
same," said Mr. Poole; but Neale had slipped away from them for the time
being and the farmer got no chance to interview the boy.
A large-sized talking machine was wheeled into place and the farmer put
in the dance records himself. The simple dances--such as they had
learned at school or in the juvenile dancing classes--brought even the
most bashful boys out upon the floor. There were no wallflowers, for
Carrie was a good hostess and, after all, had picked her company with
some judgment.
The girls began dancing with their furs and coats on; but soon they
threw their wraps aside, for the barn floor seemed as warm as any
ballroom.
They had lots of fun in the "grand march," and with a magic-lantern one
of the boys flashed vari-colored lights upon the crowd from the
loft-ladder at the end of the barn.
Suddenly Mr. Poole put a band record in the machine, and as the march
struck up, the great doors facing the house were rolled back. They had
been dancing for more than two hours. It was after ten o 'clock.
"Oh!" shouted the girls.
"Ah!" cried the boys.
The snow was now drifting steadily down, and between the illumination by
the colored slides in the lantern, and that from the blazing windows of
the big house, it was indeed a scene to suggest fairyland!
"Into the house--all of you!" shouted Mr. Poole. "Boys, assist your
partners through the snow."
"Come on! Come on!" shouted Carrie, in the lead with Neale O'Neil.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
"Charge for the _eats_, they said!" added Agnes. "Oh--ow--ouch! over my
shoe in the snow."
"And it's we-e-e-et!" wailed another of the girls. "Right down my neck!"
"'Be-you-ti-ful snow! He may sing whom it suits--
I object to the stuff 'cause it soaks through my boots!'"
quoted Agnes. "Hurry up, you ahead!"
So the march was rather ragged--more in the nature of a raid, indeed.
But they had to halt at the side door where the two maids stood armed
with brooms, for Mrs. Poole did not propose that the crowd should bring
in several bushels of snow on their feet.
In the dining and sitting-rooms were long tables, and all loaded with
good things. There were no seats, but plenty of standing room about the
tables. Everybody helped everybody else, and there was a lot of fun.
Some of the girls began to be troubled by the storm. They made frequent
trips to the windows to look out of doors. Soon wraps appeared and the
girls began to say good-night to their young hostess.
"I don't see how we're ever going to get home!" cried one of the girls
who lived at the greatest distance.
Farmer Poole had thought of that. He had routed out his men again, and
they harnessed the horses to a big pung and to two smaller sleighs.
Into these vehicles piled both boys and girls who lived on the other
side of Milton. A few private equipages arrived for some of the young
folk. The fathers of some had tramped through the snow to the farmhouse
to make sure that their daughters were properly escorted home in the
fast quickening storm.
To look out of doors, it seemed a perfect wall of falling snow that the
lamplight streamed out upon. Fortunately it was not very cold, nor did
the wind blow. But at the corner of the house there was a drift as deep
as Neale O'Neil's knees.
"But we'll pull through all right, girls, if you want to try it," he
assured Ruth and Agnes.
They did not like to wait until the sledges got back; that might not be
for an hour. And even then the vehicles would be overcrowded. "Come on!"
said Agnes. "Let's risk it, Ruth."
"I don't know but that we'd better----"
"Pshaw! Neale will get us through. He knows a shortcut--so he says."
"Of course we can trust Neale," said the older Corner House girl,
smiling, and she made no further objection.
They had already bidden their hostess and her father and mother
good-night. So when the trio set off toward town nobody saw them start.
They took the lane beside the barn and went right down the hill, between
the stone fences, now more than half hidden by the snow.
When they got upon the flats, and the lights of the house were hidden,
it did seem as though they were in a great, white desert.
"Who told you this was a short way to town?" demanded Agnes, of Neale.
"Why, one of the girls told me," Neale said, innocently enough. "You
know--that Severn girl."
"What! Trix Severn?" shrieked Agnes.
"Yes."
"I believe she started you off this way, just for the sake of getting us
all into trouble," cried Agnes. "Let's go back!"
But they were now some distance out upon the flats. Far, far ahead there
were faint lights, denoting the situation of Milton; but behind them all
the lights on the hill had been quenched. The Pooles had extinguished
the lamps at the back of the house, and of course ere this the great
barn itself was shrouded in darkness.
The snow came thicker and faster. They were in the midst of a world of
white and had there been any shelter at all at hand, Neale would have
insisted upon taking advantage of it. But there was nothing of the kind.