THE DANCE AT CARRIE POOLE’S
Tess and Dot Kenway had something of particular interest to hold their
attention, too, the minute they awoke on this Sunday morning. Dot
voiced the matter first when she asked:
“Do you suppose that dear Tom Jonah is here yet, Tess?”
“Oh, I hope so!” cried the older girl.
“Let’s run see,” suggested Dot, and nothing loth Tess slipped into her
bathrobe and slippers, too, and the two girls pattered downstairs.
Their baths, always overseen by Ruth, were neglected. They must see,
they thought, if the good old dog was on the porch.
Nobody was astir downstairs; Mrs. MacCall had not yet left her room,
and on Sunday mornings even Uncle Rufus allowed himself an extra hour
in bed. There was the delicious smell of warm baked beans left over
night in the range oven; the big, steaming pot would be set upon the
table at breakfast, flanked with golden-brown muffins on one side and
the sliced “loaf,” or brownbread, on the other.
Sandyface came yawning from her basket behind the stove when Tess and
Dot entered the kitchen. She had four little black and white blind
babies in that basket which she had found in a barrel in the woodshed
only a few days before.
Mrs. MacCall said she did not know what was to be done with the four
kittens. Sandyface’s original family was quite grown up, and if these
four were allowed to live, too, that would make nine cats around the
old Corner House.
“And the goodness knows!” exclaimed the housekeeper, “that’s a whole
lot more than any family has a business to keep. We’re overrun with
cats.”
Tess unlocked the door and she and Dot went out on the porch,
Sandyface following. There was no sign of the big dog.
“Tom Jonah’s gone!” sighed Dot, quaveringly.
“I wouldn’t have thought it—when we treated him so nicely,” said
Tess.
Sandyface sniffed suspiciously at the old mat on which the dog had
lain. Then she looked all about before venturing off the porch.
The sunshine and quiet of a perfect Sunday morning lay all about the
old Corner House. Robins sought their very souls for music to tell how
happy they were, in the tops of the cherry trees. Catbirds had not yet
lost their love songs of the spring; though occasionally one scolded
harshly when a roaming cat came too near the hidden nest.
Wrens hopped about the path, and even upon the porch steps, secure in
their knowledge that they were too quick for Sandyface to reach, and
with unbounded faith in human beings. An oriole burst into melody,
swinging in the great snowball bush near the Willow Street fence.
There was a moist, warm smell from the garden; the old rooster crowed
raucously; Billy Bumps bleated a wistful “Good-morning” from his pen.
Then came a scramble of padded feet, and Sandyface went up the nearest
tree like a flash of lightning.
“Here is Tom Jonah!” cried Tess, with delight.
From around the corner of the woodshed appeared the big, shaggy dog.
He cocked one ear and actually smiled when he saw the cat go up the
tree. But he trotted right up on the porch to meet the delighted
girls.
His brown eyes were deep pools where golden sparks played. The mud had
been mostly shaken off his flanks and paws. He was rested, and he
acted as though he were sure of his position here at the old Corner
House.
“Good old fellow!” cried Tess, putting out a hand to pat him.
At once Tom Jonah put up his right paw to shake hands. He repeated the
feat with Dot the next moment, to the delight of both girls.
“Oh!” gasped Dot, “he’s a trick dog.”
“He’s just what his collar says; he’s a gentleman,” sighed Tess,
happily. “Oh! I hope his folks won’t ever come after him.”
Ruth had to come down for Tess and Dot or they would not have been
bathed and dressed in time for breakfast. The smaller girls were very
much taken with Tom Jonah.
They found that he had more accomplishments than “shaking hands.” When
Agnes came down and heard about his first manifestation of education,
she tried him at other “stunts.”
He sat up at the word of command. He would hold a bit of meat, or a
sweet cracker, on his nose any length of time you might name, and
never offer to eat it until you said, “Now, sir!” or something of the
kind. Then Tom Jonah would jerk the tidbit into the air and catch it
in his jaws as it came down.
And those jaws! Powerful indeed, despite some of the teeth having been
broken and discolored by age. For Tom Jonah was no puppy. Uncle Rufus
declared him to be at least twelve years old, and perhaps more than
that.
But he had the physique of a lion—a great, broad chest, and muscles
in his shoulders that slipped under the skin when he was in action
like a tiger’s. Now that he was somewhat rested from the long journey
he had evidently taken, he seemed a very powerful, healthy dog.
“And he would have eaten that tramp up, if he’d gotten hold of him,”
Agnes declared, as they gathered at the breakfast table.
“Oh, no, Aggie; I don’t think Tom Jonah would really have _bitten_
that Gypsy man,” Tess hastened to say. “But he might have grabbed his
coat and held on.”
“With those jaws—I guess he would have held on,” sighed Agnes.
“Anyway,” said Dot, “he saved Ruthie’s hens. Didn’t he, Ruthie?”
“I’ll gladly pay his license fee if he wants to stay with us,” said
Ruth, gaily.
The cornmeal muffins chanced to be a little over-baked that morning;
at least, one panful was. Dot did not like “crusts”; she had been
known to hide very hard ones under the edge of her plate.
She played with one of these muffin crusts more than she ate it, and
Aunt Sarah Maltby (who was a very grim lady indeed with penetrating
eyes and a habit of seldom speaking) had an accusing eye upon the
little girl.
“Dorothy,” she said, suddenly, “you will see the time, I have no
doubt, when you will be hungry for that crust. You had better eat it
now like a nice girl.”
“Aunt Sarah, I really do not want it,” said Dot, gravely. “And—and if
I don’t, do you think I shall really some day be hungry for just
_this_ pertic’lar crust?”
“You will. I expect nothing less,” snapped Aunt Sarah. “The Kenways
was allus spend-thrifts. Why! when I was your age, Dorothy, I was glad
to get dry bread to eat!”
Dot looked at her with serious interest. “You must have been awfully
poor, Aunt Sarah,” she said, sympathetically. “You have a much better
time living with us, don’t you?”
Ruth shook her head admonishingly at the smallest girl; but for once
Aunt Sarah was rather nonplussed, and nobody heard her speak again
before she went off to church.
Neale came over later, dressed for Sunday school, and he was as much
interested in the new boarder at the Corner House as the girls
themselves.
“If he belongs anywhere around Milton, somebody will surely know about
him,” said the boy. “I’ll make inquiries. Wherever he comes from, he
must be well known in that locality.”
“Why so?” demanded Agnes.
“Because of what it says on his collar,” laughed Neale O’Neil.
“Because of what it _doesn’t_ say, I guess,” explained Ruth, seeing
her sister’s puzzled face. “There is no name of owner, or license
number. Do you see?”
“It—it would be an insult to license a dog like Tom Jonah,” sputtered
Tess. “Just—just like a tag on an automobile!”
“Yo’ right, honey,” chuckled Uncle Rufus. “He done seem like
folkses—don’ he? I’se gwine tuh give him a reg’lar barf an’ cure up
dem sore feetses ob his. He’ll be anudder dawg—sho’ will!”
The old man took Tom Jonah to the grass plot near the garden hydrant,
and soaped him well—with the “insect-suicide” soap Dot had talked
about—and afterward washed him down with the hose. Tom Jonah stood
for it all; he had evidently been used to having his toilet attended
to.
When the girls came home from Sunday school, they found him lying on
the porch, all warm and dried and his hair “fluffy.” They had asked
everybody they met—almost—about Tom Jonah; but not a soul knew
anything regarding him.
“He’s going to be ours for keeps! He’s going to be ours for keeps!”
sang Tess, with delight.
Sandyface’s earlier family—Spotty, Almira, Bungle and
Popocatepetl—had taken a good look at the big dog, and then backed
away with swelling tails and muffled objections. But the old cat had
to attend to the four little blind mites behind the kitchen range, so
she had grown familiar enough with Tom Jonah to pass him on her way to
and from the kitchen door.
He was too much of a gentleman, as his collar proclaimed, to pay her
the least attention save for a friendly wag of his bushy tail. To the
four half-grown cats he gave little heed. But Tess and Dot thought
that he ought to become acquainted with the un-named kittens in the
basket immediately.
“If they get used to him, you know,” said Tess, “they’ll all live
together just like a ‘happy family.’”
“Like _us_?” suggested Dot, who did not quite understand the
reference, having forgotten the particular cage thus labeled in the
circus they had seen the previous summer.
“Why! of course like us!” laughed Tess, and Sandyface being away
foraging for her brood, Tess seized the basket and carried it out on
the porch, setting it down before Tom Jonah who was lying in the sun.
The big dog sniffed at the basket but did not offer to disturb the
sleeping kittens. That would not do for the curious girls. They had to
delve deeper into the natural lack of affinity between the canine and
the feline families.
So Tess lifted one little black and white, squirmy kitten—just as its
mother did, by the back of its neck—and set it upon the porch before
the dog’s nose. The kitten became awake instantly. Blind as it was, it
stiffened its spine into an arch, backed away from the vicinity of the
dog precipitately, and “spit” like a tiny teakettle boiling over.
“Oh! oh! the horrid thing,” wailed Dot. “And poor Tom Jonah didn’t do
a thing to it!”
“But see him!” gasped Tess, in a gale of giggles.
For really, Tom Jonah looked too funny for anything. He turned away
his head with a most embarrassed expression of countenance and would
not look again at the spitting little animal. He evidently felt
himself in a most ridiculous position and finally got up and went off
the porch altogether until the girls returned the basket of kittens to
its proper place behind the stove.
At dinner that Sunday, when Uncle Rufus served the roast, he held the
swinging door open until Tom Jonah paced in behind him into the
dining-room. Seeing the roast placed before Mrs. MacCall, Tom Jonah
sat down beside her chair in a good position to observe the feast; but
waited his turn in a most gentlemanly manner.
Mrs. MacCall cut some meat for him and put it on a plate. This Uncle
Rufus put before Tom Jonah; but the big dog did not offer to eat it
until he was given permission. And now he no longer “gobbled,” but ate
daintily, and sat back when he was finished like any well-bred person,
waiting for the next course.
Even Aunt Sarah looked with approval upon the new acquisition to the
family of the old Corner House. She had heard the tale of his rescue
of Ruth’s poultry from the marauding Gypsy, and patted Tom Jonah’s
noble head.
“It’s a good thing to have a watch-dog on the premises,” she said,
“with all that old silver and trash you girls insist upon keeping out
of the plate-safe. Your Uncle Peter would turn in his grave if he knew
how common you was makin’ the Stower plate.”
“But what is the good of having a thing if you don’t make use of it?”
queried Ruth, stoutly.
Ruth was a girl with a mind of her own, and not even the carping
criticisms of Aunt Sarah could turn her from her course if once she
was convinced that what she did was right. Nor was she frightened by
her schoolmates’ opinions—as note her friendship with Rosa Wildwood.
Bob Wildwood was a “character” in Milton. People smiled at him and
forgave his peculiarities to a degree; but they could not respect him.
In the first place, Bob was a Southerner—and a Southerner in a New
England town is just as likely to be misunderstood, as a Northerner in
a Georgian town.
Bob and his daughter, Rosa, had drifted to Milton a couple of years
previous. They had been “drifting” for most of the girl’s short life;
but now Rosa was quite big enough to have some influence with her
shiftless father, and they had taken some sort of root in the harsh
New England soil, so different from their own rich bottom-lands of the
South.
Besides, Rosa was in ill health. She was “weakly”; Bob spoke of her as
having “a mis’ry in her chest.” Dr. Forsythe found that the girl had
weak lungs, but he was sane and old-fashioned enough to scout the idea
that she was in danger of becoming a victim of tuberculosis.
“If you go to work, Bob, and earn for her decent food and a warm
shelter, she will pull through and get as hearty and strong as our
Northern girls,” declared the doctor, sternly. “You say you lost her
twin two years ago——”
“But I didn’t done los’ Juniper by no sickness,” muttered Bob, shaking
his head.
The Corner House girls thought Bob Wildwood a most amusing man, for he
talked just like a darky (to their ears); but Uncle Rufus shook his
head in scorn at Wildwood. “He’s jes’ no-’count white trash,” the old
colored man observed.
However, spurred by the doctor’s threat, Bob let drink alone for the
most part, and went to work for Rosa, his remaining daughter, who was
just Ruth’s age and was in her class at High—when she was well enough
to get there. In spite of her blood and bringing up, Rosa Wildwood had
a quick and retentive mind and stood well in her classes.
Bob became a coal-heaver. He worked for Lovell & Malmsey. He drove a
pair of mules without lines, ordering them about in a most wonderful
manner in a tongue entirely strange to Northern teamsters; and he was
black with coal-dust from week-end to week-end. Ruth said there only
was one visible white part of Rosa’s father; that was the whites of
his eyes.
The man must have loved his daughter very much, however; for it was
his nature to be shiftless. He would have gone hungry and ragged
himself rather than work. He now kept steadily at his job for Rosa’s
sake.
On Monday Rosa was not at school, and coming home to luncheon at noon,
Ruth ran half a block out of her way to find out what was the matter.
Not alone was the tenement the Wildwoods occupied a very poor one, but
Rosa was no housekeeper. It almost disgusted the precise and prim Ruth
Kenway to go into the three-room tenement.
Rosa had a cold, and of course it had settled on her chest. She was
just dragging herself around to get something hot for Bob’s dinner.
Ruth made her go back to bed, and she finished the preparations.
When she came to make the tea, the Corner House girl was horrified to
observe that the metal teapot had probably not been thoroughly washed
out since the day the Wildwoods had taken up their abode in Milton.
“Paw likes to have the tea set back on the stove,” drawled Rosa, with
her pleasant Southern accent. “When he gets a chance, he runs in and
‘takes a swig,’ as he calls it, out of the pot. He says it’s good for
the gnawin’ in his stomach—it braces him up an’ is _so_ much better
than when he useter mix toddies,” said the girl, gratefully. “We’d
have had June with us yet, if it hadn’t been for paw’s toddies.”
“Oh!” cried Ruth, startled. “I thought your sister June died?”
Rosa shook her head and the tears flowed into her soft eyes. “Oh, no.
She went away. She couldn’t stand the toddies no more, she said—and
her slavin’ to keep the house nice, and us movin’ on all the time.
June was housekeeper—she was a long sight smarter’n me, Ruth.”
“But the teachers at school think you are awfully smart,” declared the
Corner House girl.
“June warn’t so smart at her books,” said Rosa. “But she could do
_anything_ with her hands. You’d thunk she was two years older’n me,
too. She was dark and handsome. She got mad, and run away, and then we
started lookin’ for her; but we’ve never found her yet,” sighed Rosa.
“And now I’ve got so miserable that I can’t keep traveling with paw.
So we got to stop here, and maybe we won’t ever see June again.”
“Oh! I hope you will,” cried Ruth. “Now, your father’s dinner is all
ready to dish up. And I’ll come back after school this afternoon and
rid up the house for you; don’t you do a thing.”
Ruth had time that noon for only a bite at home, and explained to Mrs.
MacCall that she would be late in returning from school. She carried a
voluminous apron with her to cover her school frock when she set about
“ridding up” the Wildwood domicile.
Ruth wanted to help Rosa; she hoped Rosa would keep up with the class
and be promoted at the end of the term, as she was sure to be herself.
And she was sorry for sooty, odd-talking Bob Wildwood.
What Rosa had said about her lost twin sister had deeply interested
Ruth Kenway. She wanted, too, to ask the Southern girl about “June,”
or Juniper.
“We were the last children maw had,” said Rosa. “She just seemed to
give up after we were born. The others were all sickly—just drooped
and faded. And they all were girls and had flower names. Maw was right
fanciful, I reckon.
“I wish June had held on. She’d stuck it out, I know, if she’d
believed paw could stop drinking toddies. But, you see he _has_. He
‘swigs’ an awful lot of tea, though, and I expect it’s tanning him
inside just like he was leather!”
Ruth really thought this was probable—especially with the teapot in
the condition she had found it. But she had put some washing soda in
the pot, filled it with boiling water, and set it back on the stove to
stew some of the “tannin” out of it.
While the Corner House girl was talking with Rosa in the little
bedroom the girl called her own, Bob brought his mules to a halt
before the house with an empty wagon, and ran in as usual.
The girls heard him enter the outer room; but Ruth never thought of
what the man’s object might be until Rosa laughed and said:
“There’s paw now, for a swig at the teapot. I hope you left it full
fo’ him, Ruthie, dear.”
“Oh, goodness mercy me!” cried the Corner House girl, and darted out
to the kitchen to warn the man.
But she was too late. Already the begrimed Bob Wildwood had the spout
of the teapot to his lips and several swallows of the scalding and
acrid mixture gurgled down his throat before he discovered that it was
not tea!
“Woof! woof! woof!” he sputtered, and flung pot and all away from him.
“Who done tryin’ poison me! Woof! I’s scalded with poison!”
He coughed and spluttered over the sink, and then tried a draught of
cold water from the spigot—which probably did him just as much good
as anything.
“Oh, dear me, Mr. Wildwood!” gasped Ruth, standing with clasped hands
and looking at the sooty man, half frightened. “I—I was just boiling
the teapot out.”
“Boilin’ it out?”
“Yes, sir. With soda. I—I——It won’t poison you, I guess.”
“My Lawd!” groaned Bob. “What won’t yo’ Northerners do nex’? Wash out
er teapot!” and he grumblingly went forth to his team and drove away.
Ruth felt that her good intentions were misunderstood—to a degree.
But Rosa thanked her very prettily for what she had done, and the next
day she was able to come to school again.
It was only a few days later that Carrie Poole invited a number of the
high school girls and boys—and some of the younger set—to the last
dance of the season at her home. She lived in a huge old farmhouse,
some distance out of town on the Buckshot road, and the Corner House
girls and Neale O’Neil had spent several pleasant evenings there
during the winter and spring.
The night before this party there was a big wind, and a part of one of
the chimneys came down into the side yard during the night with a
noise like thunder; so Ruth had to telephone for a mason before
breakfast.
Had it not been for this happening, the Corner House girls—at least,
Ruth and Agnes—and Neale O’Neil, would have escaped rather an
embarrassing incident at the party.
Neale came over to supper the evening of the party, and he brought his
pumps in a newspaper under his arm.
“Come on, girls, let’s have your dancing slippers,” he said to the two
older Corner House girls, who were going to the dance. “I’ll put them
with mine.”
And he did so—rolling the girls’ pretty slippers up in the same
parcel with his own. He left the parcel in the kitchen. Later it was
discovered that the mason’s helper had left a similarly wrapped parcel
there, too.
When the three young folk started off, it was Agnes who ran back after
the bundle of dancing slippers. Neale carried it under his arm, and
they walked briskly out through the suburbs of Milton and on along the
Buckshot road.
“Are you really going to Pleasant Cove this summer, Neale?” demanded
Agnes, as they went on together.
“If I can. Joe has asked me. And you girls?”
“Trix says we must come to her father’s hotel for two weeks at least,”
Agnes declared.
“Humph!” said Neale, doubtfully. “Are you going, Ruth?”
“I—don’t—know,” admitted the older Corner House girl.
“Now, isn’t that just too mean?” complained Agnes. “You just say that
because you don’t like Trix.”
“I don’t know whether Trix will be of the same mind when the time
comes,” said Ruth, firmly.
“I believe you,” grunted Neale.
Agnes pouted. “It’s just mean of you,” she said. “Of course she will
want us to go.” While Agnes was “spoons” with a girl, she was always
strictly loyal to her. She could not possibly see Trix Severn’s faults
just now.
They arrived at the farmhouse and found a crowd already assembled.
There was a great deal of talking and laughter, and while Neale stood
chatting with some of the boys in the hall, Ruth and Agnes came to him
for their slippers.
“Sure!” said the boy, producing the newspaper-wrapped bundle he
carried. “Guess I’ll put on my own pumps, too.”
He unrolled the parcel. Then a yell of derision and laughter arose
from the onlookers; instead of three pairs of dancing slippers, Neale
produced two pairs of half-worn and lime-bespattered shoes belonging
to the masons who had repaired the old Corner House chimney!
“Now we can’t dance!” wailed Agnes.
“Oh, Neale!” gasped Ruth, while the young folk about them went off
into another gale of laughter.
“Well, it wasn’t my fault,” grumbled Neale. “Aggie went after the
bundle.”
“Shouldn’t have left them right there with the masons’ bundle—so
now!” snapped Agnes.