THE BASKET BALL TEAM IN TROUBLE
Billy Bumps backed away in time to escape the vigorous blow Neale O'Neil
aimed at him with the stick he had picked up. But the old goat had
managed to tear loose some of the hair on one side of the odd, old
fellow's head, and now stood contemplating the angry and excited
Sprague, with the hair hanging out of his mouth and mingling with his
own long beard.
"Shorn of my locks! shorn of my locks! Samson has lost his glory and
strength--yea, verily!" cried the owner of the hair, mournfully. "Yea,
how hath the mighty fallen and the people imagined a vain thing! And if
there were anything here hard enough to throw at that old goat!"
Thus getting down to a more practical and modern form of language,
Seneca Sprague looked wrathfully around for a club or a rock, nothing
less being sufficiently hard to suit him.
"Oh, you mustn't!" cried Dot. "Poor Billy Bumps doesn't know any better.
Why, once he chewed up my Alice-doll's best dress. And _I_ didn't hit
him for it!"
A comparison of a doll's dress with his own hair did not please Mr.
Sprague much. He shook his now ragged head, from which the lock of hair
had been torn so roughly. Billy Bumps considered this a challenge and,
lowering his horns, suddenly charged the despoiled prophet.
"Drat the beast!" yelled Seneca, forgetting his Scriptural language
entirely; and leaped into the air just in time to make a passage for
Billy Bumps between his long legs.
Neale, for laughter, could not help.
Slam! went Billy's horns against the end of the hen-house. Mr. Sprague
was not there to catch the goat on the rebound, for, leaving his bag of
apples, he rushed for the side gate and got out upon Willow Street
without much regard for the order of his going, voicing prophecies this
time that had only to do with Billy Bumps' immediate future.
The disturbance brought Ruth and Agnes running from the house, but only
in time to see the wrathful Seneca Sprague, his linen duster flapping
behind him, as he disappeared along Willow Street. When Ruth heard about
Billy Bumps' banquet, she sent the bag of apples to Seneca Sprague's
little shanty which he occupied, down on the river dock.
"Of all the ridiculous things a goat ever did, that is the most
ridiculous!" exclaimed Agnes.
"There's more than one hair in the butter this time," repeated Neale
O'Neil, with laughter.
"I can't laugh, even at that stale joke," sighed Agnes.
"What's the matter, Aggie?" demanded Neale. "Have you soured on the
world completely?"
"I feel as though I had," confessed Agnes, her sweet eyes vastly
troubled and her red lips in a pout. "What do you think, Neale?"
"A whole lot of things," returned the boy. "What do you want me to
think?"
"Mr. Smartie! But tell me: Have you heard anything about our basket ball
team being set back? Eva told me she'd heard Mr. Marks was dreadfully
displeased at something we'd done and that he said we shouldn't win the
pennant."
"Not win the pennant?" cried Neale, aghast. "Why, you girls have got it
cinched!"
"Not if Mr. Marks declares all the games we won last spring forfeited. I
think he's too, too mean!" cried Agnes.
"Oh, he wouldn't do that!" urged Neale.
"She says he is going to."
"Eve Larry doesn't always get things straight," said Neale,
comfortingly. "But what does he do it for?"
"I don't know. I'm sure _I_ haven't done anything."
"Of course not!" chuckled her boy friend, looking at her rather
roguishly. "Who was it proposed that raid on old Buckham's strawberry
patch that time, coming home from Fleeting?"
"Oh! he couldn't know about that," cried Agnes, actually turning pale at
the suggestion.
"I don't know," Neale said slowly. "Trix Severn was in your crowd then,
and she'd tell anything if she got mad."
"And she's mad all right," groaned Agnes.
"I believe she is--with you Corner House girls," added Neale O'Neil.
"She'd be telling on herself--the mean thing!" snapped Agnes.
"But she is not on the team. She was along only as a rooter. The
electric car broke down alongside of Buckham's strawberry patch. Wasn't
that it?"
"Uh-huh," admitted Agnes. "And the berries _did_ look so tempting."
"You girls got into Buckham's best berries," chuckled Neale. "I heard he
was quite wild about it."
"We didn't take many. And I really didn't think about it's being
stealing," Agnes said slowly. "We just did it for a lark."
"Of course. 'Didn't mean to' is an old excuse," retorted the boy.
"Well, Mr. Buckham couldn't have known about it then," cried Agnes. "I
don't believe Mr. Marks heard of it through him. If he had, why not
before this time, after months have gone by?"
"I know. It's all blown over and forgotten, when up it pops again.
'Murder will out,' they say. But you girls only murdered a few
strawberries. It looks to me," added Neale O'Neil, "as though somebody
was trying to get square."
"Get square with _whom_?" demanded Agnes.
"Well--you were all in it, weren't you?"
"All the team?"
"Yes."
"I suppose so. But Trix and some of the others picked and ate quite as
many berries as we did. The girls that went over to Fleeting to root for
us were all in it, too."
"I know," Neale said. "If the farmer had been sure who you were, or any
of the electric car men had told---- Had the car all to yourselves,
didn't you?"
"We girls were the only passengers," said Agnes.
"Then make up your mind to it," the wise Neale rejoined, "that if Mr.
Marks has only recently been told of the raid, some girl has been
blabbing. The farmer or the conductor or the motorman would have told at
once. They wouldn't have waited until three months and more had passed."
"Oh dear, Neale! do you think that?"
"It looks just like a mean girl's trick. Some telltale," returned the
boy, in disgust.
"Trix Severn might do it, I s'pose, because she doesn't like me any
more."
"You remember what Mr. Marks told us all last spring when we grammar
grade fellows were let into the high school athletics? He said that
one's conduct outside of school would govern the amount of latitude he
would allow us in school athletics. I guess he meant you girls, too."
"He's an awfully strict old thing!" complained Agnes.
"They tell me," pursued Neale O'Neil, "that once a part of the baseball
nine played hookey to go swimming at Ryer's Ford, and Mr. Marks
immediately forfeited all the games in the Inter-scholastic League for
that year, and so punished the whole school."
"That's not fair!" exploded Agnes.
"I don't know whether it is or not. But I know the baseball captain this
year was mighty strict with us fellows."
The topic of the promised punishment of the basket ball team for an old
offense was discussed almost as much at the Corner House that evening as
was the "lady in gray" and the sovereigns of England.
Tess kept these last subjects alive, for she was studying the rhyme and
would try to recite it to everybody that would listen--including Linda,
who scarcely understood ten words of English, and Sandyface and her
family, gathered for their supper in the woodshed. Tess was troubled
about the closing of the Women's and Children's Hospital, because of its
effect upon Mrs. Eland, too.
"'First William, the Norman,
Then William, the son;
Henry, Stephen and----'
I do hope," ruminated Tess, "that that poor Mrs. Eland won't be turned
out of her place. Don't you hope so, Ruthie?"
"I am sure it would be a calamity if the hospital were closed," agreed
the older sister. "And the matron must be a very lovely lady, as you
say, Tess."
"She is awfully nice--isn't she, Dot?" pursued Tess, who usually
expected the support of Dorothy.
"Just as nice as she can be," agreed the smallest Corner House girl.
"Couldn't she come to live in our house if she can't stay in the
horsepistol any longer?"
"At the _what_, child?" gasped Agnes. "What is it you said?"
"Well--where she lives now," Dot responded, dodging the doubtful word.
"Goodness, dear!" laughed Ruth, "we can't make the old Corner House a
refuge for destitute females."
"I don't care!" spoke up Dot, quickly. "Didn't they make the
Toomey-Smith house, on High Street into a home for indignant old maids?"
At that the older girls shouted with laughter.
"'In-di-gent'--'in-di-gent'! child," corrected Agnes, at last. "That
means without means--poor--unable to care for themselves. 'Indignant old
maids,' indeed!"
"Maybe they _were_ indignant," suggested Tess, too tender hearted to see
Dot's ignorance exposed in public, despite her own private criticism of
the little one's misuse of the English language. "See how indignant
Aunt Sarah is--and _she's_ an old maid."
This amused Ruth and Agnes even more than Dot's observation. It was true
that Aunt Sarah Maltby was frequently "an indignant old maid."
But Tess endured the laughter calmly. She was deeply interested in the
problem of Mrs. Eland's future, and she said:
"Maybe Uncle Peter ought to have left the hospital some of his money
when he died, instead of leaving it all to us and to Aunt Sarah."
"Do you want to give up some of your monthly allowance to help support
the hospital, Tess?" demanded Ruth, briskly.
"I--I---- Well, I couldn't give _much_," said the smaller girl,
seriously, "for a part of it goes to missions and the Sunday School
money box, and part to Sadie Goronofsky's cousin who has a nawful bad
felon, and can't work on the paper flowers just now----"
"Why, child!" the oldest Kenway said, with a tender smile, and putting
her hand lightly on Tess' head, "I didn't know about that. How much of
your pin money goes each month to charity already? You only have a
dollar and a half."
"I--I keep half a dollar for myself," confessed Tess. "I could give part
of that to the hospital."
"I'll give some of my pin money, too," announced Dot, gravely, "if it
will keep Mrs. Eland from being turned out of the horsepistol."
Ruth and Agnes did not chide the little one for her mispronunciation of
the hard word this time, but they looked at each other seriously. "I
wonder if Uncle Peter was one of those rich people who should have
remembered the institution in his will?" Ruth said.
"Goodness!" exclaimed Agnes. "If we go around hunting for duties Uncle
Peter Stower left undone, and do them for him, where will _we_ be? There
will be no money left for ourselves."
"You need not be afraid," Ruth said, with a smile. "Mr. Howbridge will
not let us use our money foolishly. He is answerable for every penny of
it to the Court. But maybe he will approve of our giving a proper sum
towards a fund for keeping the Women's and Children's Hospital open."
"Is there such a fund?" demanded Agnes.
"There will be, I think. If everybody is interested----"
"And how you going to interest 'em?" asked the skeptical Agnes.
"Talk about it! Publicity! That is what is needed," declared Ruth,
vigorously. "Why! we might all do something."
"Who--all? I want to know!" responded her sister. "I don't have a cent
more than I need for myself. Only two dollars and a half." Agnes'
allowance had been recently increased half a dollar by the observant
lawyer.
"All of us can help," said Ruth. "Boys and girls alike, as well as grown
people. The schools ought to do something to raise money for the
hospital's support."
"Like a fair, maybe--or a bazaar," cried Agnes, eagerly. "That ought to
be fun."
"You are always looking for fun," said Ruth.
"I don't care. If we can combine business with pleasure, so much the
better," laughed Agnes. "It's easier to do things that are amusing than
those that are dead serious."
"There you go!" sighed Ruth. "You are becoming the slangiest girl. I
believe you get it all from Neale O'Neil."
"Poor Neale!" sniffed Agnes, regretfully. "He gets blamed for all my
sins and his own, too. If I had a wooden arm, Ruth, you'd say I caught
it of him, you detest boys so."
Part of this conversation between her older sisters must have made a
deep impression on Tess Kenway's mind. She went forth as an apostle for
the Women's and Children's Hospital, and for Mrs. Eland in particular.
She said to Mr. Stetson, their groceryman, the next morning, with
profound gravity:
"Do you know, Mr. Stetson, that the Women's and Children's Hospital has
got to be closed?"
"Why, no, Tess--is that so?" he said, staring at her. "What for?"
"Because there is no money to pay Mrs. Eland. And now she won't have any
home."
"Mrs. Eland?"
"The matron, you know. And she's such a nice lady," pursued Tess. "She
taught me the sovereigns of England."
Mr. Stetson might have laughed. He was frequently vastly amused by the
queer sayings and doings of the two youngest Corner House girls, as he
often told his wife and Myra. But on this occasion Tess was so serious
that to laugh at her would have hurt her feelings. Mr. Stetson expressed
his regret regarding the calamity which had overtaken Mrs. Eland and the
hospital. He had never thought of the institution before, and said to
his wife that he supposed they "might spare a trifle toward such a good
cause."
Tess carried her tale of woe into another part of the town when she and
Dot went with their dolls to call on Mrs. Kranz and Maria Maroni, on
Meadow Street, where the Stower tenement property was located.
"Did you know about the Women's and Children's Hospital being shut up,
Mrs. Kranz?" Tess asked that huge woman, who kept the neatest and
cleanest of delicatessen and grocery stores possible. "And Mrs. Eland
can't stay there."
"Ach! you dond't tell me!" exclaimed the German woman. "Ist dodt so? And
vor vy do dey close de hospital yedt? Aind't it a goot vun?"
"I think it must be a very good one," Tess said soberly, "for Mrs. Eland
is an awfully nice lady, and she is the matron. She taught me the
sovereigns of England. I'll recite them for you." This she proceeded to
do.
"Very goot! very goot!" announced Mrs. Kranz. "Maria can't say that
yedt."
Maria Maroni, the very pretty Italian girl (she was about Agnes' age)
who helped Mrs. Kranz in the store, laughed good-naturedly. "I guess I
knew them once," she said. "But I have forgotten. I never like any
history but 'Merican history, and that of Italy."
"Ach! you foreigners are all alike," Mrs. Kranz protested, considering
herself a bred-in-the-bone American, having lived in the country so
long.
Although she was scolding her brisk and pretty little assistant most of
the time, she really loved Maria Maroni very dearly. Maria's mother and
father--with their fast growing family--lived in the cellar of the same
building in which was Mrs. Kranz's shop. Joe Maroni, as was shown by the
home-made sign at the cellar door, sold
ISE COLE WOOD VGERTABLS
and was a smiling, voluble Italian, in a velveteen suit and cap, with
gold rings in his ears, who never set his bright, black eyes upon one of
the Corner House girls but he immediately filled a basket with his
choicest fruit as a gift for "da leetla padrona," as he called Ruth
Kenway. He had an offering ready for Tess and Dot to take home when they
reappeared from Mrs. Kranz's back parlor.
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Maroni," Tess said, while Dot allowed one of the
smaller Maronis to hold the Alice-doll for a blissful minute. "I know
Ruthie will be delighted."
"Si! si! _dee_-lighted!" exclaimed Joe, showing all his very white teeth
under his brigand's mustache. "The leetla T'eressa ees seek?"
"Oh, no, Mr. Maroni!" denied Tess, with a sigh. "I am very well. But I
feel very bad in my mind. They are going to close the Women's and
Children's Hospital and my friend, Mrs. Eland, who is the matron, will
have no place to go."
Joe looked a little puzzled, for although Maria and some of her brothers
and sisters went to school, their father did not understand or speak
English very well. Tess patiently explained about the good work the
hospital did and why Mrs. Eland was in danger of losing her position.
"Too bad-a! si! si!" ejaculated the sympathetic Italian. "We mak-a da
good mon' now. We geev somet'ing to da hospital for da poor leetla
children--_si! si!_"
"Oh, will you, Mr. Maroni?" cried Tess. "Ruth says there ought to be a
fund started for the hospital. I'll tell her you'll give to it."
"Sure! you tell-a leetla padrona. Joe geeve--sure!"
"Oh, Dot! we can int'rest lots of folks--just as Ruth said," Tess
declared, as the two little girls wended their way homeward. "We'll talk
to everybody we know about the hospital and Mrs. Eland."
To this end Tess even opened the subject with Uncle Rufus' daughter,
Petunia Blossom, who chanced to be at the old Corner House when Tess and
Dot arrived, delivering the clothes which she washed each week for the
Kenways.
Petunia Blossom was an immensely fat negress--and most awfully black.
Uncle Rufus often said: "How come Pechunia so brack is de mysteriest
mystery dat evah was. She done favah none o' ma folkses, nor her
mammy's. She harks back t' some ol' antsistah dat was suttenly mighty
brack--yaas'm!"
"I dunno as I kin spar' anyt'ing fo' dis hospital, honey," Petunia said,
seriously, when Tess broached the subject. "It's a-costin' me a lot t'
keep up ma dues wid de Daughters of Miriam."
"What's the Daughters of Miriam, Petunia?" asked Agnes, who chanced to
overhear this conversation on the back porch. "Is it a lodge?"
"Hit's mo' dan a lodge, Miss Aggie," proclaimed Petunia, with pride.
"It's a beneficial ordah--yaas'm!"
"And what benefit do you derive from it?" queried Agnes.
"Why, I doesn't git nottin' f'om it yet awhile, honey," said Petunia,
unctiously. "But w'en I's daid, I gits one hunderd an' fifty dollahs.
Same time, dey's 'bleeged t' tend ma funeral."
"Dat brack woman suah is a flickaty female," grumbled Uncle Rufus, when
he heard Agnes repeating the story of Petunia's "benefit" to the family
at dinner that night. When nobody but the immediate family was present
at table, Uncle Rufus assumed the privilege of discussing matters with
the girls. "She's allus wastin' her money on sech things. Dere, she has
got t' die t' git her benefit out'n dem Daughters of Miriam. She's
mighty flickaty."
"What does 'flickaty' mean, Uncle Rufus, if you please?" asked Dot,
hearing a new word, and rather liking the sound of it.
"Why, chile, dat jes' mean _flickaty_--das all," returned the old
butler, chuckling. "Dah ain't nottin' in de langwidge what kin explanify
dat wo'd. Nor dah ain't no woman, brack or w'ite, mo' flickaty dan dat
same Pechunia Blossom."