OFF FOR THE SEASIDE
The last hours of the school term were busy ones indeed. Even Tess had
her troublesome “’zaminations.” At the study table on the last evening
before her own grade had its closing exercises, Tess propounded the
following:
“Ruthie, what’s a ’scutcheon?”
“Um—um,” said Ruth, far away.
“A _what_, child?” demanded Agnes.
“‘’Scutcheon?’”
“‘Escutcheon,’ she means,” chuckled Neale, who was present as usual at
study hour.
“Well, what _is_ it?” begged Tess, plaintively.
“Why?” demanded Ruth, suddenly waking up. “That’s a hard word for a
small girl, Tess.”
“It says here,” quoth Tess, “that ‘There was a blot upon his
escutcheon.’”
“Oh, yes—sure,” drawled Neale, as Ruth hesitated. “That must mean a
fancy vest, Tess. And he spilled soup on it—sure!”
“Now Neale! how horrid!” admonished Ruth, while Agnes giggled.
“I do think you are all awful mean to me,” wailed Tess. “You don’t
tell me a thing. You’re almost as mean as Trix Severn was to me
to-day. I don’t want to go to her father’s hotel, so there! Have we
got to, Ruthie?”
“What did she do to you, Tess?” demanded Agnes, with a curiosity she
could not quench. For, deep as the chasm had grown between her and her
former chum, she could not ignore Trix.
“She just turned up her nose at me,” complained Tess, “when I went by;
and I heard her say to some girl she was with: ‘There goes one of them
now. They pushed their way into our party, and I s’pose we’ve got to
entertain them.’ Now, _did_ we push our way in, Ruthie?”
Ruth was angry. It was not often that she displayed indignation, so
that when she did so, the other girls—and even Neale—were the more
impressed.
“Of course she was speaking of that wretched invitation she gave us to
stay at her father’s hotel at Pleasant Cove,” said Ruth. “Well!”
“Oh, Ruthie! don’t say you won’t go,” begged Agnes.
“I’ll never go to that Overlook House unless we pay our way—be sure
of that,” declared the angry Ruth.
“But we _are_ going to the shore, Ruthie?” asked Tess.
“Yes.”
“Maybe Pearl Harrod will ask us again,” murmured Agnes, hopefully.
“I guess we can pay our way and be beholden to nobody,” said Ruth,
shortly. “I will hire one of the tents, if nothing else. And we’ll
start the very day after High closes, just as we planned.”
Despite the loss of her “soulmate,” Agnes was pretty cheerful. She was
to graduate from grammar school; and although she was sorry to lose
Miss Georgiana Shipman as a teacher, she was delighted to get out of
“the pigtail classes,” as she rudely termed the lower grades.
“I’m going to do up my hair, Ruthie, whatever you say,” she declared,
“just as soon as I get into high school next fall. I’m old enough to
forget braids and hair-ribbons, I should hope!”
“Not yet, my child, not yet,” laughed Ruth. “Why! there are more girls
in High who wear their hair _down_ than _up_.”
“But I’m so big——”
“You mean, you’d be big,” chuckled Neale, “if you were only rolled
out,” for he was always teasing Agnes about her plumpness.
“Well! I want to celebrate some way,” sighed Agnes. “Can’t we have a
specially nice supper that night?”
“Surely, child,” said her sedate sister. “What do you want?”
“Well!” repeated Agnes, slowly; “you know I’ll never graduate from
Grammar again. Couldn’t we kill some of those nice frying chickens of
yours, Ruthie?”
“Oh, my!” cried Neale. “What have the poor chickens done that they
should be slaughtered to make a Roman holiday?”
“Mr. Smartie!” snapped Agnes. “You be good, or you sha’n’t have any.”
“If that Tom Jonah hadn’t been busy on a certain night, none of us
would have eaten those particular frying chickens,” laughed Neale. “I
wonder if that Gypsy is running yet?”
“He didn’t get the frying chickens in the bag,” said Agnes. “They were
in another coop. We hatched them in January and brought them up by
hand. Say! I don’t believe you know much about natural history, Neale,
anyway.”
“I guess he knows more than Sammy Pinkney does,” Tess said, again
drawn into the conversation. “Teacher asked him to tell us two breeds
of dairy cattle and which gives the most milk. She’d been reading to
us about it out of a book. So Sammy says:
“‘The bull and the cow, Miss Andrews; and the cow gives the most
milk.’”
Dot’s school held its closing exercises one morning, and Tess’ in the
afternoon. Then came the graduation of Agnes and Neale O’Neil from the
grammar school. Ruth was excused from her own classes at High long
enough to attend her sister’s graduation.
Although the plump Corner House girl was no genius, she always stood
well in her classes. Ruth saw to that, for what Agnes did not learn at
school she had to study at home.
So she stood well up in her class, and she _did_ look “too
distractingly pretty,” as Mrs. MacCall declared, when she gave the
last touches to Agnes’ dress before she started for school that last
day. Miss Ann Titus, Milton’s most famous seamstress and
“gossip-in-ordinary,” had outdone herself in making Agnes’ dress. No
girl in her class—not even Trix Severn—was dressed so becomingly.
The envious Trix heard the commendations showered on her former
friend, and her face grew sourer and her temper sharper. She well knew
she had invited the Corner House girls to be her guests at Pleasant
Cove; but she did not want them in her party now. She did not know how
to get out of “the fix,” as she called it in her own mind.
She had intimated to two or three other girls who were going, however,
that Agnes and Ruth had forced the invitation from her in a moment of
weakness. If she had to number them of her party, Miss Trix proposed
to make it just as unpleasant for the Kenway sisters as she could.
High school graduation was on Thursday. On Friday a special through
train was put on by the railroad from Milton to Pleasant Cove. It was
scheduled to leave the former station at ten o’clock.
Luckily Mrs. MacCall had insisted upon having all the trunks and bags
packed the day before, for on this Friday morning the Corner House
girls had little time for anything but saying “good-bye” to their many
friends, both human and dumb.
“Whatever will Tom Jonah think?” cried Tess, hugging the big dog that
had taken up his abode at the Corner House so strangely. “He’ll think
we have run away from him, poor fellow!”
“Oh! _don’t_ you think that, Tom Jonah!” begged Dot, seizing the dog
on the other side. “We all love you so! And we’ll come back to you.”
“You’ll give him just the best care ever, won’t you, Uncle Rufus?”
cried Agnes.
“Sho’ will!” agreed the old colored man.
“_Can’t_ we take him with us, Ruthie?” asked Dot.
Ruth would have been tempted to do just this had she been sure that
they would hire a tent in the colony as soon as they reached Pleasant
Cove. Tom Jonah was just the sort of a protector the Corner House girl
would have chosen under those circumstances.
But Ruth was puzzled. She had not seen Pearl Harrod, and was not sure
whether Pearl had completely filled her uncle’s bungalow with guests
or not. Of one thing Ruth was sure: if they went to the Overlook House
(Mr. Terrence Severn’s hotel), they would pay their board and refuse
to be Trix’s guests.
When the carriage came for them, Tom Jonah stood at the gate and
watched them get in and drive away with a rather depressed air. Dot
and Tess waved their handkerchiefs from the carriage window at him as
long as they could see the big dog.
There was much confusion at the station. Many people whom the girls
knew were on the platform, or in the cars already. Trix Severn was
very much in evidence. The Kenway sisters saw the other girls who were
going to accept Miss Severn’s hospitality in a group at one side, but
they hesitated to join this party.
Trix passed the Kenways twice and did not even look at them. Of
course, she knew the sisters were there, but Ruth believed that the
mean-spirited girl merely wished them to speak to her so that she
could snub them publicly.
“Well, Ruthie Kenway!” exclaimed a voice suddenly behind the Corner
House girls.
It was Pearl Harrod. Pearl was a bright-faced, big girl, jovial and
kind-hearted. “I’ve just been looking for you everywhere,” pursued
Pearl. “Here it is the last minute, and you haven’t told me whether
you and the other girls are going to my uncle’s house or not.”
“Why—if you are sure you want us?” queried Ruth, with a little break
in her voice.
“I should say yes!” exclaimed Pearl. “But I was afraid you had been
asked by some one else.”
Trix turned and looked the four sisters over scornfully. Then she
tossed her head. “Waiting like beggars for an invitation from
_some_body,” she said, loudly enough for all the girls nearby to hear.
“You’d think, if those Corner House girls are as rich as they tell
about, that they’d pay their way.”