[Illustration: Before either Tess or Dot thought to cry out for
help, they were out of sight of the camp.]
THE CORNER HOUSE
GIRLS UNDER CANVAS
HOW THEY REACHED PLEASANT COVE
AND WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD
BY
GRACE BROOKS HILL
Author of “The Corner House Girls,”
“The Corner House Girls at School,” etc.
_ILLUSTRATED BY_
_R. EMMETT OWEN_
NEW YORK
BARSE & HOPKINS
PUBLISHERS
BOOKS FOR GIRLS
The Corner House Girls Series
By Grace Brooks Hill
_Illustrated._
THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS
THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL
THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS UNDER CANVAS
THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY
THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS’ ODD FIND
THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS ON A TOUR
(_Other volumes in preparation_)
BARSE & HOPKINS
Publishers—New York
Copyright, 1915,
by
Barse & Hopkins
_The Corner House Girls Under Canvas_
Printed in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
I. Tom Jonah
II. Something to Look Forward To
III. The Dance at Carrie Poole’s
IV. The Mystery of June Wildwood
V. Off for the Seaside
VI. On the Train
VII. Something Ahead
VIII. The Gypsy Camp
IX. The Spoondrift Bungalow
X. Some Excitement
XI. The Little Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
XII. A Picnic with Agamemnon
XIII. The Night of the Big Wind
XIV. An Important Arrival
XV. Two Girls in a Boat—to Say Nothing of the Dog!
XVI. The Gypsies Again
XVII. On Wild Goose Island
XVIII. The Search
XIX. A Startling Meeting
XX. The Frankfurter Man
XXI. Mrs. Bobster’s Mysterious Friend
XXII. The Yarn of the “Spanking Sal”
XXIII. The Shadow
XXIV. Brought to Book
XXV. The End of the Outing
ILLUSTRATIONS
Before either Tess or Dot thought to cry out for help,
they were out of sight of the camp
A kicking figure was sprawled on the roof, clinging
with both hands to the ridge of it
Ruth actually went back, groping through the
gathering smoke, for the doll. With it she scrambled
out upon the shingles
The dog was perplexed. He started after the man;
he started back for the girls. He whined and he
barked
THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS UNDER CANVAS
CHAPTER I
TOM JONAH
“Come here, Tess! Come quick and look at this poor dog. He’s just
drip-ping-_wet_!”
Dot Kenway stood at a sitting-room window of the old Corner House,
looking out upon Willow Street. It was a dripping day, and anything or
anybody that remained out-of-doors and exposed to the downpour for
half an hour, was sure to be saturated.
Nothing wetter or more miserable looking than the dog in question had
come within the range of the vision of the two younger Corner House
girls that Saturday morning.
Tess, who was older than Dot, came running. Anything as frightfully
despondent and hopeless looking as that dog was bound to touch the
tender heart of Tess Kenway.
“Let’s—let’s take him to the porch and feed him, Dot,” she cried.
“Will Ruthie let us?” asked Dot.
“Of course. She’s gone for her music lesson and won’t know, anyway,”
declared Tess, recklessly.
“But maybe Mrs. MacCall won’t like it?”
“She’s upstairs and won’t know, either. Besides,” Tess said,
bolstering up her own desire, “she says she hasn’t ever sent anybody
away hungry from her door; and that poor dog looks just as hungry as
any tramp that ever came to the old Corner House.”
The girls ran out of the sitting-room into the huge front hall which,
in itself, was almost big enough for a ballroom. It was finished in
dark, dark oak; there was a huge front door—like the door of a
castle; the furniture was walnut, upholstered in haircloth, worn shiny
by more than three generations of use; and out of the middle of the
hall a great stairway arose, dividing when half-way up into two
sections, while a sort of gallery was built all around the hall at the
second floor, out of which the doors of the principal chambers opened.
There was a third story above, and above that a huge garret—often the
playroom of the Corner House girls on such days as this. In the rear
were two wings built on to the house, each three stories in height.
The house had its “long” side to Willow Street, and only a narrow
grass plot and brick walk separated the sitting-room windows from the
boundary fence.
It faced Main Street, at its head, where the Parade Ground began. The
dripping trees on the Parade were now in full leaf and the lush grass
beneath them was green. The lawns of the old Corner House needed the
mower, too; and at the back Uncle Rufus—the general factotum of the
establishment—had laid out a wonderful kitchen garden which already
had yielded radishes and tender onions and salad, and promised green
peas to accompany the spring lamb to the table on the approaching
Fourth.
Tess and Dot Kenway crossed the big hall of the Corner House, and went
on through the dining-room with its big table, huge, heavily carved
sideboard and comfortably armed chairs, through the butler’s pantry
into the kitchen. As Tess had said, Mrs. MacCall, their good-natured
and lovable housekeeper, was not in sight. Nobody delayed them, and
they stepped out upon the half-screened porch at the back. The
woodshed joined it at the far end. The steps faced Willow Street.
On the patch of drying green a goat was tethered, lying down in the
rain, reflectively chewing a cud. He bleated when he saw the girls,
but did not offer to rise; the rain did not disturb him in the least.
“Billy Bumps likes the rain,” Dot said, thoughtfully.
The dog outside the gate did not seem to be enjoying himself. He had
dropped down upon the narrow strip of sward between the flagged walk
and the curbing; his sides heaved as though he had run a long way, and
his pink tongue lolled out of his mouth and dripped.
“My!” Dot murmured, as she saw this, “the rain’s soaked right through
the poor doggy—hasn’t it? And it’s just dripping out of him!”
Tess, more practical, if no more earnest in her desire to relieve the
dog’s apparent misery, ran down to the gate through the falling rain
and called to him:
“Poor, poor doggie! Come in!”
She opened the gate temptingly, but the strange dog merely wagged his
tail and looked at her out of his beautiful brown eyes. He was a
Newfoundland dog, with a cross of some breed that gave him patches of
deep brown in his coat and very fine, long, silky hair that curled up
at the ends. He was strongly built and had a good muzzle which was
powdered with the gray hairs of age.
“Come here, old fellow,” urged Tess, “_Do_ come in!”
She snapped her fingers and held the gate more invitingly open. He
staggered to his feet and limped toward her. He did not crouch and
slink along as a dog does that has been beaten; but he eyed her
doubtfully as though not sure, after all, of this reception.
He was muddied to his flanks, his coat was matted with green burrs,
and there was a piece of frayed rope knotted about his neck. The dog
followed Tess doubtfully to the porch. Billy Bumps climbed to his feet
and shook his head threateningly, stamping his feet; but the strange
dog was too exhausted to pay the goat any attention.
The visitor at first refused to mount the steps, but he looked up at
Dot and wagged his tail in greeting.
“Oh, Tess!” cried the smallest girl. “He thinks he knows me. Do you
suppose we have ever seen him before?”
“I don’t believe so,” said Tess, bustling into the woodshed and out
again with a pan of broken meat that had been put aside for Sandyface
and her children. “I know I should remember him if I had ever seen him
before. Come, old fellow! Good doggie! Come up and eat.”
She put the pan down on the porch and stood back from it. The brown
eyes of the dog glowed more brightly. He hesitatingly hobbled up the
steps.
A single sniff of the tidbits in the pan, and the dog fell to
wolfishly, not stopping to chew at all, but fairly jerking the meat
into his throat with savage snaps.
“Oh, don’t gobble so!” gasped Dot. “It—it’s bad for your
indigestions—and isn’t polite, anyway.”
“Guess you wouldn’t be polite if you were as hungry as he is,” Tess
observed.
The dog was so tired that he lay right down, after a moment, and ate
with his nose in the pan. Dot ventured to pat his wet coat and he
thumped his tail softly on the boards, but did not stop eating.
At this juncture Uncle Rufus came shuffling up the path from the
hen-coop. Uncle Rufus was a tall, stoop-shouldered, pleasantly brown
negro, with a very bald crown around which was a narrow growth of
tight, grizzled “wool.” He had a smiling face, and if the whites of
his eyes were turning amber hued with age he was still “purty
pert”—to use his own expression—save when the rheumatism laid him
low.
“Whar’ yo’ chillen done git dat dawg?” he wanted to know, in
astonishment.
“Oh, Uncle Rufus!” cried Dot. “He came along looking _so_ wet——”
“And he was _so_ tired and hungry,” added Tess.
“I done spec’ yo’ chillen would take in er wild taggar, ef one come
erlong lookin’ sort o’ meachin’,” grumbled the colored man.
“But he’s so good!” said Tess. “See!” and she put her hand upon the
handsome head of the bedraggled beast.
“He jes’ er tramp dawg,” said Uncle Rufus, doubtfully.
“He’s only tired and dirty,” said Tess, earnestly. “I don’t believe he
wants to be a tramp. He doesn’t look at all like the tramps Mrs.
MacCall feeds at the back door here.”
“Nor like those horrid Gypsies that came to the house the other day,”
added Dot eagerly. “I was afraid of them.”
“Well, it suah ain’t b’long ’round yere—dat dawg,” muttered Uncle
Rufus. “It done run erway f’om somewhar’ an’ hit trabbel
far—ya-as’m!”
He pulled the ears of the big dog himself, in a kindly fashion, and
the dog pounded the porch harder with his tail and rolled a trusting
eye up at the little group. Evidently the tramp dog was convinced that
this would be a good place to remain in, and “rest up.”
A pretty girl of twelve or thirteen, with flower-like face, plump, and
her blue eyes dancing and laughing in spite of her, ran in at the side
gate. She had a covered basket of groceries on her arm, and was
swathed in a raincoat with a close hood about her face.
“Agnes!” screamed Dot. “See what we’ve got! Just the nicest,
friendfulnest dog——”
“Mercy, Dot! More animals?” was the older sister’s first comment.
“But he’s such a _nice_ dog,” wailed Dot.
“And so hungry and wet,” added Tess.
“What fine eyes he has!” exclaimed Agnes, stooping down to pat the
noble head. Instantly the dog’s pink tongue sought her hand and—Agnes
was won!
“He’s splendid! he’s a fine old fellow!” she cried. “Of course we’ll
keep him, Dot.”
“If Ruthie says so,” added Tess, with a loyalty to the oldest Corner
House girl born of the fact that Ruth had mothered the brood of three
younger sisters since their real mother had died three years previous.
“I dunno wot yo’ chillen want er dawg for,” complained Uncle Rufus.
“To keep chicken thieves away,” said Agnes, promptly, laughing
roguishly at the grumbling black man.
“Oh!” cried Tess. “You said yourself, Uncle Rufus, that those Gypsies
that stopped here might be looking at Ruth’s chickens.”
“Well, I done guess dat tramp dawg knows when he’s well off,” said the
old man, chuckling suddenly. “He’s layin’ down lak’ he’s fixin’ tuh
stay—ya-as’m!”
The dog had crept to the most sheltered corner of the porch and curled
up on an old rag mat Mrs. MacCall had left there for the cats.
“He ought to have that dirty old rope taken off,” said Agnes.
Uncle Rufus drew out his clasp knife and opened the blade. He
approached the weary dog and knelt down to remove the rope.
“Glo-_ree_!” he exclaimed, suddenly. “He done got er collar on him.”
It was hidden in the thick hair about the dog’s neck. The three girls
crowded close to see, Uncle Rufus unbuckled it and handed the leather
strap to Agnes.
“See if there is any name and address on it, Aggie!” gasped Tess. “Oh!
I hope not. Then, if we don’t know where he came from, he’s ours for
keeps.”
There was a small brass plate; but no name, address, or license number
was engraved upon it. Instead, in clear script, it was marked:
“THIS IS TOM JONAH. HE IS A
GENTLEMAN.”
“There!” cried Dot, as though this settled the controversy. “What did
I tell you? He _can’t_ be any tramp dog. He’s a gentleman.”
“‘Tom Jonah,’” murmured Agnes. “What a funny name!”
When Ruth came home the younger girls bore her off at once to see Tom
Jonah sleeping comfortably on the porch. The old dog raised his
grizzled muzzle, wagged his tail, and beamed at her out of his soft
brown eyes.
“The dear love!” cried Tess, clasping her hands. “Isn’t he beautiful,
Ruthie?”
“Beautifully dirty,” said Ruth, doubtfully.
“Oh, but Uncle Rufus says he will wash him to-morrow. He’s got some
insect—insecty-suicide soap like he puts on the henroosts——”
“Insecticide, Dot,” admonished Tess. “I wish you wouldn’t try to say
words that you _can’t_ say.”
Dot pouted. But Ruth patted her head and said, soothingly:
“Never mind, honey. We’ll let the poor dog stay till he rests up,
anyway. He looks like a kind creature.”
But she, as well as the adults in the old Corner House, did not expect
to see Tom Jonah the next morning when they awoke. He was allowed to
remain on the porch, and despite the objections of Sandyface, the
mother cat, and the army of younger felines growing up about her, Tom
Jonah was given a bountiful supper by Mrs. MacCall herself.
Dot and Tess ran to peep at the dog just before going to bed that
night. He blinked at them in the lampshine from the open door, and
thumped the porch flooring with his tail.
It was past midnight before anything more was heard of Tom Jonah. Then
the whole house was aroused—not to say the neighborhood. There was a
savage salvo of barks from the porch, and down the steps scrambled Tom
Jonah. They heard him go roaring down the yard.
Then there arose a great confusion at the hen house—a squawking of
frightened hens, the loud “cut, cut, ca-da-cut!” of the rooster,
mingling with which was the voice of at least one human being and the
savage baying of Tom Jonah.